Honor Your Father – Doing the Hard Things Well

“The modern world detests authority but worships relevance. Our Christian conviction is that the Bible has both authority and relevance, and that the secret of both is Jesus Christ.”   .  John Stott    .

2 Sam 1:1 After the death of Saul, David returned from striking down the Amalekites and stayed in Ziklag two days.

The King was dead on the battlefield. The man David had honored as King, father-in-law, a father-figure, the one appointed by God, the anointed leader of his people was gone. The man David honored even though he had spent the last eight years being hunted by Saul. Through the abuse and the threats and the need to protect himself from being killed by his king, David had never ceased to honor the Lord’s Anointed. This is one of the great stories in which God shows us just how it is that we are to honor those He places in authority over us – even if those people fail to do right and honorable things.

 Many of us have someone we should honor in accordance with God’s Word but we have difficulty living up to God’s standard in this; a parent who was abusive or neglectful or has offended us in some way; a boss who doesn’t listen or seems to be actively against us; spiritual leaders who seem hypocritical or overly harsh when lined up with our way of thinking or our understanding of God’s Word; political leaders who push laws or policies we disagree with – the list of people God has given authority over us is quite large and our reactions to these people are important to Him and to our relationship with Him. We may fool ourselves into thinking that our own understanding is as good or better than those in authority, we may even fool ourselves into thinking that God’s Word is not as plain and simple as it seems in these matters. But God is not fooled and He knows if we are walking in forgiveness and submission to His plan or not.

David sets an unparalleled example for us in this; we would do well to follow it. He was not weak. He was not foolish. He was not blind to the faults of his mentor and king. But he trusted God and His ways and words more than he trusted his own judgment and feelings. If you are walking in opposition to the authority God has placed in your life for your protection and guidance this might be a good day to repent and ask God to lead you into forgiveness and obedience. Know this, David refused to speak against or raise his hand against God’s anointed and God blessed him for it. The years of submission and obedience and trust in God while waiting for God’s timing to enter into God’s plan were years of great growth and spiritual understanding for David. When he heard the report of Saul’s death David had no regrets for how he had treated his father and King, it would be well for all of us if we can say the same of those God has put over us.

 What growth in wisdom and God’s Ways are you missing by opposing those God has put in authority for you? What power in battle and abilities to overcome your enemy have you lost by opposing them? What future plan of God are you thwarting, diverting or delaying because you refuse to submit to God in these matters? Consider your ways, speak with God, listen to His Word, examine your own heart and let Him show you His grace in walking a life of honor.

Another Year Older and Deeper in … What? When Will We Wake Up & Start ASKING?

 “You do not have because you do not ask.”    .  James 4:2b 

2012 has shown many of us things about ourselves, our country and our churches that have left a bitter aftertaste. The Church that is supposed to be the Bride of Christ, preparing the world for the coming of the King and for eternity with Him has shown herself to have abdicated her responsibility to be a change agent. We have failed miserably to affect culture in a positive way and we have failed to raise up a body of Christians who understand their God and His desires for their lives. The social ills we decried during the recent American elections are signs of decay that are affecting the whole world. Abortion is rampant; intolerance for Christianity is barely hidden behind calls to wipe out “religion” from the public discourse; Christians are persecuted around the globe and are subjected to everything from being shouted down when they speak the truth of God’s Word to being murdered for daring to declare Jesus as their Lord. And yet the Church has kept quiet. In America many were vocal in their desire to put a conservative into office, shouting that the “left” was against Christ and that abortion was the biggest travesty of all – and in doing so they were willing to accept an avowed anti-Christ cultist as their choice for the highest authority in the land in an election dubbed as a choice between the “lesser of two evils”. When did we decide to relegate our time to speak out for God to a couple of months before an election? How is it that we have become such “little box” Christians that we were left with such a poor choice? Is it not because the Church in America and in Europe has lost her voice?

But is it really lost? Or have the Christians of today settled for a “faith” that is satisfied with being comfortable? Rather than losing our voice we seem to have simply decided to keep quiet and let the World spin itself to an early end. It seems we have taken up the folly of Israel of the Old Testament – they were blessed to be a blessing to the whole world, to bring the knowledge of the One God to the World that all might receive His love and care but they chose instead to hoard His blessings to themselves. By doing that they failed to change cultures from darkness to holiness and then instead of being a light on a hill they followed the darkness and became like the World. And they entered into judgment from God over and over due to their failure to bring God’s Ways and Truth to the World in a way that changed their minds and brought light to the cultural conscience of the peoples. The Church here has done the same. We have allowed an “us four no more” mentality to lull us to sleep. As long as our families are “safe” for heaven we have lost our ability to care for the lost. We have lost the battles of our culture to reveal God to them and in doing so we have allowed the Devil to win the battle for the hearts of the people. This has led to widespread legalization of abortion, same-sex marriages and all manner of vice and addiction. God has been relegated to a spiteful, vengeful dictator who wants to keep people from having “fun” and Who is irrelevant at best to the needs of life. How can this be?

Christian, YOU need to wake up from your slumber and begin again with God. YOU need to begin to pray for your nation and for your neighbors. YOU need to seek God’s Word and find out who HE really is. YOU need to stop presenting a God made in your own imagination and find out what God has really said and what God will really do. YOU need to speak what God speaks about Himself and about you and about the World and quit relying on someone else to tell you about Him. YOU need to find out what you really believe. And if you find that the Bible disagrees with your belief system then YOU are the one who is wrong and who needs to come into alignment with the Holy “I AM”. If you read the Word and say to yourself, “I’ve never seen these things happen, they must not be true for today” then you are wrong and the Word of God is right and you need to change. Because God says He doesn’t change, He is the same yesterday, today and forever. So if your thinking and the Word of God are not in agreement or if your faith doesn’t measure up to the faith presented in the Bible stories then you are in the wrong and you need to wake up.

Let us rise up in 2013 and pray in a new reality for God’s Church, for our cultures and for those closest to us. It is not too late, eternity is still waiting to be filled with souls that have yet to believe and we have victories and miracles that are waiting for us to ask, seek and act. You can watch another year pass you by or you can be a part of the greatest move of God ever seen in the World to date – but you have not because you ask not. 2013 can be a year of great cultural shift if we will make it the “Year of the Great Ask”. 

Begin Praying TODAY & be ready to Act.