When Life Is Good

So often in this Christian culture under which we abide and live, we see a stigma of piety. We are told to give thanks and be glad, even when our hearts are heavy and our spirits laden. We hear the command to praise God in the storms of life, and we do, but is that what God desires? Does God want us to be a people of conditionary prayer and praise?

We have so much in America, and other first-world countries, that we take it for granite. We are so caught up in are own petty problems that we don’t see the problems of others. Praising God in our trials is important, and often nesseccary to get us through them. But, do we remember to also praise Him when things are going well? When life is easy, do we remember the God of the storms and the God of blessings?

When you’re on top of the world, everything is going your way, it’s easy to make an idol out of wealth, success, even happiness. It is even easier to simply forget God, and everything he brought you through to get to this place. I would say that it is easy to cry out to God for help and mercy while you’re in the thick of a storm, of a trial. But, it is a difficult thing to ask for help when the enemy is you, your pride, your sucess, your security. 

The greater the pain, the greater the praise.

 It shouldn’t take a storm to get us to glorify the Lord for what he has done. It is easy to praise Him in the storm, however, I encourage you to praise Him when life is good.

Now, you may be thinking, “that was short”, and you’d be right. I wanted to leave you with a simple thought before we embark together on a fantastic journey. The journey of which I speak will begin in a few days when my family and I board a plane to Uganda, Africa. The mission work my family and our other team members will accomplish there, will in large part be posted to this blog so that you will be informed about prayer needs and praises. 

I am the official journalist for this mission trip and hope to, for the duration of this trip, be posting in faster succession than what you have been previously used to me doing. I am excited about what God has planed for the trip and I hope you will agree to be praying for the work that will be going on in the country of Uganda. For more information you can visit my family’s website: allenministries.com

As always, thanks for reading.

–the anonymous novelist

Yesterday: A Tale Of Procrastination

Today is a day called yesterday. Because I am currently writing this in today, which is your yesterday, you will read this post in what will be tomorrow; yet for you it will be today. 

Have you every heard of circular reasoning? Both the answers yes and no are correct. Yes, you have heard of it. No, there is no such thing as circular reasoning. It is just a term used by people as an insult to others, but it doesn’t really mean anything at all.  

To reason is to think, to understand, to comprehend, and determine justice by process of logic.

If it was a legitimate term, the application would mean, reasoning that is complete and flawless, ever moving in a single, unending, continuous line of thought. This, is impossible. 

Controversial Statement:

To say that the universe created itself because it had to, is not circular reasoning.

Simplistic, (yet surprisingly lengthy), answer:

It is not circular reasoning because it has a difinitive starting point and ending point, neither of which can, without interference, link back to the other. If I say that the universe created itself because it had to, I am really saying that the origin of the universe is as follows:

• There was nothing 
• The nothing matrixed something
• The something had to exist because it was necessary for the nothing to become something

Definitive starting point, (nothing), links abstractly and beyond all reason to definitive ending point, (something). There is no link back from the something to the nothing, it is not uncreated, nor can we repeat the so-called “cycle”, by returning to nothing without it being more than reiteration. 

What the large majority call circular reasoning is really either nonsense or something they cannot wrap their minds around: like the title of my post. So, know that what is to follow is not what some would call “circular reasoning”, but rather, a new and interesting perspective for you to take in the way you view the days you have.

To procrastinate is to put off, delay, or postpone. So, if “Yesterday” is the title of my post, how could it be a story about delaying or postponing? Is it retrospect? Surely not. Why would I choose a title so blatantly ironic just to loophole out of the topic at hand by falling on the obvious cop-out? 

Remember, I’m here to bring a different perspective to you, my readers, so whatever I write is written to help you view life differently.

Yesterday… It seems like only tomorrow when I first saw you. Come to think of it, it was tomorrow. People don’t seem to realize, but we get to see each and every yesterday long before it becomes today or even tomorrow. The choices we make in today, and the plans we make for tomorrow effect what goes on in our yesterdays.

Strange thing about yesterdays: they are always looked back upon, but never looked forward to. What we put off until tomorrow will eventually end up in our yesterdays. And it’s sad that the reminiscence of yesterday can go as far back as you can remember, and yet memories of today and tomorrow only last for one, solitary day. The things we will regret, we could prevent. 

We hold the power to change our yesterdays. To do what we don’t want to remember in yesterday that we put off until tomorrow, today. If it keeps getting delayed, it will only make your todays and yesterdays emptier and emptier.

No one ever crashes because they were looking through the windshield, but, often people crash because they were looking in the rearview mirrors. Too concerned about what has already passed, they are not aware of what is coming ahead. 

Let us remember today… Or, rather, let me remember today and let you remember tomorrow… Which is your today, to not put off until tomorrow what we could have done today. Let our todays be successful and productive, that our yesterdays would be fulfilled and we would be satisfied with how we lived out our yesterdays.

Confused yet? I hope not, or at least not so much that you missed my message. Live every day in a way that you wouldn’t mind seeing in retrospect for the rest of your life. And watch for your yesterdays coming on, plan for them before they get here, so that you will be prepared.

God’s gift of yesterday is life, history, and thanksgiving. Be thankful for the days you have, the life you’ve been given, and set an example for others to follow. As always, thanks for reading.

–the anonymous novelist

Friends

A man who hath friends must show himself friendly, and there is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
Proverbs 18:24

True friends, those who will stick by you when “push comes to shove”,(apologies for the overused expression), are those who are most like Christ himself. Christ is a friend that sticketh closer than a brother, and Christians, Christ-like people, are to be a reflection of Him. The world, as in: secularists, humanists, atheists, pantheists, agnostics, astrologists, and those who aren’t quite sure what they are, cannot inderstand what is a real friendship. Going back to the old standby, the New Oxford American Dictionary, we see your normal, everyday sort of friend described thusly. 

Friend:

1.  A person whom one knows and with whom one has a bond of mutual affection. 
2.  Someone who is not an enemy.

For the first definition, it sounds as if a friend is something mechanical rather than personal; something seen but not felt. If all it takes to be a friend is to be known and liked with moderate affability and admiration, then why bother even giving it a name. A friend equals companionship, comradary, trust, and a connection to something that is more powerful than anything else in the world, the love that is Jesus Christ. If you love God, you will love others, for God is love. Love lives inside of you, how can you contain a force that existed before time and space? 

But, to everyone else–those who have never experienced this inner-living love– the concept of friendship extends about as far as a mutual relationship for the benefit of both parties. Trust is optional.

As the saying goes, “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer”.

Wealth maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbor.

Proverbs 19:4 

There is a wealth of wisdom written in the Proverbs. This one in particular relates a mode of friendship that is fleeting, conditionary. Wealth attracts people, and people are by nature selfish. In many ways, money makes better friends than most people do; and really, if people are friends with you for your money, are they truly friends of yours? 

An example of true friendship can be found later on in the Scriptures, though much more hard-hitting than the previous one.

Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.

John 15:13

This one really hits home the longer you think about it. We, as Christians, should be willing to die for the ones we care about. It is the love that is within us that motivates us to put our carnal desires behind us and think of others before we consider even our own lives. This willingness to die for someone is ultimately what separates the wheat from the chaff, the goats from the sheep, the non-believers from those who have love coursing through their spiritual veins.

I have met a few people who believe differently. Our current generation leans more toward the “what can you do for me” kind of friendship. In fact, the Disney Channel is full of good examples of this next kind of conditionary friendship. It is popularly exploited because it is a surprisingly common mindset of young people.

Ye are my friend, if ye do whatsoever I command you.
 John 15:14

We might laugh at that, it is a sad truth that people actually live their lives in that way; dying from the inside and seriously injuring the lives of others. Though, if you read the context of this verse, it is Jesus himself who is speaking these words. He says through the person of David that he who hath friends must show himself friendly, then moves on to say that if you love God and obey him, you can be called a friend of the Creator of the universe. 

Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I have commanded you.

John 15:14

To be a friend of God… 

Notice the two action words in this verse: do and command. God commands, (voluntary action on His part), we do, (voluntary action on our part), and we will be called friends of the Most High God.

I recently spent what seemed like a very short amount of time with some very dear friends of mine. It caused me to realize that time is fleeting and life is but a vapor. We should not only cherish the times we are given, but use those times to bring glory to the Father. Friendship was created for the sole purpose of glorifying God. If it edifies a brother or sister along the way, so much more the praise. 

This is my commandment that ye love one another, as I have loved you. 
John 15:12

I love you guys… And gals. And, just so I’m not discriminating, if there happen to be any pig ducklings reading along, I love you too. As always, thanks for reading. 

  –the anonymous novelist

The Real American Idol

It seems every new generation that comes and goes has a different definition of this thing we call, “The American Dream”. For the pilgrims who first settled this land, the dream was for religious liberty. For the pioneers who established the cities and nurtured the land, the dream was for a new start on an unexplored frontier. And for the founding fathers of America, the dream was for freedom from tyranny to raise up a nation that serves and honors God, and to establish freedom for generations to come.

But what is, “The American Dream”, today? It’s becoming all too evident that we Americans love ourselves and our possessions more than anything else. Our compassion is wasted on endangered animals and news scandal victims. Our mercy is given to those who don’t deserve it: the cruel, the manipulative, the arrogant. Our love is reserved for ourselves. We love fame, wealth, popularity, and most of all, power. We idolize the vices of our hearts, setting up graven images of our own wants and selfish desires. 

America’s true idol has become greed, the want of more than what we currently posses of both good and evil. We despise anyone who tells us what we can or cannot do. Hence, we despise God, and say that there is no God. When in reality, we wish to be gods.

The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.  
Psalm 14:1a

Studies have been made in years past concerning the heart of a man, and the suspicions have been verified. The human heart is an intelligent organ, not unlike the brain. It sends commands and signals throughout the body and possesses the ability to stimulate emotions and thoughts.

For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he…
Proverbs 23:7a

The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Jeremiah 17:9

We control our brain and our brain controls our functions. But it is not just something that came out of a movie, this whole, “trust your heart”, thing. There is a real struggle between trusting your head and trusting your heart, and too often we trust our hearts, following them blindly wherever they lead. But our hearts are deceitful, wishing only to betray us and cause us harm. 

The heart is the essence of a man.

This sounds poetic and sweet, but in light of what man truly is, it becomes the opposite. Man is sinful, evil by nature, and his thoughts are only evil continually.

Hell and destruction are never full; so the eyes of man are never satisfied. Proverbs 27:20

Our heart chooses who and what our idols are, what we worship, what we obsess over, and what we put before our God. It is a faithful saying that a man is his own worst enemy. This is why the Apostle Paul says that he dies daily, we are to die to ourselves daily, that The Holy Spirit might live in and through us. 

Am I right? Does our heart tell us only what we want to hear? Is our American idol truly ourselves and selfish desires? 
Well, what does your head tell you? It’s counsel is true and wise, so trust it preeminently. God gave us a brain that could be developed, grown, and absorbed with knowledge and wisdom. We should depend upon our brain for every major decision in our lives. For the heart is the real man, and if you are anything like me, I never want that man to make any discussion for me.

So, think with your head, not with your heart. Make idols of nothing carnal, it is fleeting and meaningless. Rather, serve God, love Him with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength. 

As always, thanks for reading and be looking for future posts.

–the anonymous novelist