When We Need Right Discernment in Bible Study

 

For the first time, I feel like I have a tough assignment in making a blog post. So many issues are rising up over the Bible word now, that it's difficult to know what to try to address first.

Some folk are bold enough in error now, that they'll forbid Christians to dispute wrongs, despite how Jesus tells us to take wrongs to your brother and reason it out, and to go to good witnesses and the church if your brother won't listen, and to know you've gained a brother if he is willing to listen and reason together.

God's word doesn't tell us not to dispute wrongs. Instead, Heaven says to

• reason together;

• take matters to the church;

• be peacemakers;

• suffer a wrong if the wrong doesn't have consequences that ruin our witness in Jesus;

• let all you do be for God's glory;

• commit everything you do to the Savior we have in Jesus, even if that means correcting or rebuking;

• avoid foolish arguments and godless mockery;

• never argue with a foolish person;

• run from evil when there isn't any way to bring truth and healing;

• know that God doesn't intend for any one person to help reach every single person who has been in his or her life or who has crossed paths with him or her (Luke 10:4; Jude 1:22, KJV; and other scriptures);

• correct in a Spirit of gentleness;

• know what the word is truly saying;

• recognize biblical error, and rebuke it;

• know that God's New Testament word is a "sword" that may divide even families or households, or that may make shake up a household's thinking; but know that that does not mean the Bible is a literal weapon that murders (not at all!);

• seek Jesus through His word, and seek a good Shepherd to help open up and translate, to give background, and to guide you through difficult Bible books and passages;

• know that, as a Christian, it's okay if your Spiritual feelings and insights are different from how the world sees (for example, the scripture that says we shine like starry light in this error-prone world, isn't about being above others, being known, having notoriety, nor celebrity; it's about being a quiet light, among millions of other quiet, guiding lights, no matter how troubled and perverse the world);

• and know that God's word to us isn't understood by a person outside of faith, not until that person's heart of faith begins to know the love/Salvation we have in Jesus. (That's what the Bible says. So, try not to give a person outside of faith a Scripture that says we "go forth and jump about like calves in the stall"! The person outside of faith might not see right away, that the word isn't saying faith is restless and rambunctious, that what the word is saying is that we have inner joy in Jesus, like a new calf that's just discovering the world around him, even if we're confined to some small way of living.)

Also know that not every Bible translation is clear and accurate to God's meaning, which is why we need to study and pray about our and others' discernment of God's word. One translation says "do everything without grumbling or arguing," which means without grudges and quarrels. But the meaning is not "without dispute." "Dispute" is a word that some Bible translations mistakenly use.

And, here again, Jesus has told us how to handle disputes when we have to or need to.

When the Holy Spirit Speaks

 

When the Holy Spirit says something, we ought to hear His meaning. In Hebrews 13:5, for example, God isn't saying to be okay with not having what you've trusted Him for (Matthew 6:7-8).

Instead, He always says to be patient, even in affliction. And He says that, while waiting on Him to move,

"Be very thankful for and respectful about what you have, not wanting what someone else has" but only what Grace has given you at this time.

Hebrews 13:5

~

Just be sure never to misquote what the Spirit of the Lord has said to you! If you know it's only your own way of talking, not exactly what the Spirit has said, say I'm in agreement with Heaven but this is me talking, like the apostle Paul did.

A Bible-study Idea for Adults

  

 

 

Life is full with choices and dilemmas that keep us in need of prayer. But with prayer, choices become easier.

Some choices are easier when made shortly after being in prayer with others, like finally making peace with a decision just after leaving a church service, or days after beginning to pray for someone about a need.

But some choices also are made easier with grace. When you receive something — even the idea of something — with grace in Jesus, it's easy to receive* that something. But the Bible says if you the individual are not able to receive something in good faith, in good conscience, then that, for you, is sin. And grace may not help that sin.

When the King James Version of the Bible speaks of Heaven's "manifold grace," that means God's grace varies according to our individual relationship with Jesus. That's why, at one point as a minister, the apostle Paul made the decision to abstain from eating the meat he knew he was allowed to eat as a workman in the Lord. Paul reasoned, at least once, that it would be better to abstain, even for the rest of his life, as long as eating all that he was allowed to eat would cause a brother of weak conscience to stumble. That self-control, on Paul's part, could only strengthen Paul in faith.

Paul was one to rejoice, just like Nehemiah, that God made good our freely given sweet (like honey) and meaty foods. But Paul also was one to tell people bold truths: when people were twisting the idea of eating with grace, joy, and thanksgiving from the heart, together with thoughts of perversion or sexuality, as in Romans 1.

And Jesus, before Paul, had given stern warnings.

The truth of the matter is that anything of the life we are meant to have on this side of Heaven, can serve God's grace and glory, even if only for a season. Conversely, things of life on this side of Heaven, can be used ungodly, whether misuse is of food, or of the physical body.

It's shameful, but there are those who boldly say all things were meant for food, and that all appetites are for "God's" glory.

It's sickening, the way some feel.

But thank Heaven we can live delivered or separate from that. ... Thank you, Jesus.

And thank you, Lord, that, as Christians, we can have discernment about what's good for us, and what isn't — and can use that discernment to prepare both healthy foods and foods we realize are a little less healthy but joyful in a heavenly way.

That's because, in Jesus, we realize Heaven doesn't want bickering over food. He wants us to have fellowship, one with another, in as much as we can.

God gave Peter, the disciple, an uncommon calling — sometime after Jesus returned to the Spirit alone, or to His heavenly existence. I'm sure more than one disciple wanted to go onward to Heaven when Jesus wasn't physically present anymore. And I'm sure more than one felt convicted in Spirit, against doing anything of sin (because of a longing for Heaven, not so much because of legalistic feelings about Hebrew law).

I say that, because, in my walk in Jesus, I had so much a closeness to God's word at first, that a pastor who spoke with me personally, muttered, at one point, "too Heaven-bound to be any earthly good." I know that feeling, of being close to the Lord.

God knows that happens in the lives of some Christians. And to help bring our walk back closer to earth, for His good, Heaven may give special assignments. For example, in Peter's case, Heaven's instructions were to step away from His Hebrew understanding for at least a time, and go to fellowship, to eat meals, with Gentiles. Those (non-Hebrew) Gentiles weren't doing anything adverse to health, costly to faith, or against faith when they would eat "fourfooted beasts" (presumably, only those split-hoofed animals that ate grasses — because Heaven's morals had become part of the Christian heart — but maybe prepared in clean ways that were different than the Hebrew way), "wild beasts" (maybe chickens!), "creeping things" (maybe gators?), and birds that flew.

By grace, God gave freedom to make choices about meats He would no longer consider evil to consume for sustenance.

But being faithful, we know that can only goes so far.

Faith is a matter of living in good conscience.

~

* Dear Reader: Thank you for reading. I hope this is somehow a help to you or someone in your life. Please be patient, as I have been, wherever one of my posts may have an awkward sentence or word. I have a problem with someone hacking my posts, and I don't always realize, right away, that someone has changed something I've posted. ... God bless us, going forward.

It's Not about Having a Perfect Diet

     

There's so much to learn on this side of Heaven: how much to eat, and when; how often we can have a favorite unhealthy food; what's truly a blessing for us to eat; and how much we can be thankful for God's kind Grace on the a-little-less-than-healthy choices we sometimes need to make.

All over this world of ours, we're growing to have a little more awareness of God's Grace on our foods. We can thank Heaven for the healthy stuff we can only eat occasionally. And most of us can thank Heaven for the milk and eggs that help fortify us almost each day.

But some of us, like me, need to learn more moderation. And we ought to start talking with others about the moderation we already have.

When it comes to me and bread, for example, I'm not very moderate. I'll eat a lot - a lot! - of the wrong breads, every day, if given the chance. I have the potential to go for a large, factory-processed honey bun, every day, if I don't watch myself, and that's despite the fact that I know those honey buns are made of a fine cake flour and other stuff that a body digests so quickly, that it all (right away!) converts to sugars that put a sudden heavy load on those organs that are trying to handle my blood sugar.

And I know the same about the type of bread and the type of sugar used to make canned ravioli. But if there's ravioli like that to spare, and I'm having a difficult day, and I'm stranded for lunch, that's what I have to be thankful for. Yet it's days like this that remind me how much we need to do better than we are.

When we're thanking God for bread each day (both the bread of His word and the bread that helps us to physically live), we ought to be sure we're thankful. We ought to be sure we're thankful, from our heart of hearts, for whatever it is - thankful whatever it is has come from a place of Grace, and that whatever it is will help sustain us and help shape our sense of peace, thankfulness, and sometimes joy.

We also can be thankful for skills gained and lessons learned on those days we participate in preparing our own meals. Of all the things to be angry about while we're living this life, learning through food preparation isn't anything to protest!

In fact, did you know preschool babies as young as a year old, now, are dabbling in the kitchen - and not only at home? Before COVID, some preschools were having family-style meals, where toddlers were learning to appreciate selecting vegetables to eat at the lunch table, or were growing to like putting fresh lettuce on their individual sandwiches, for example.

Those babies were becoming more mindful and contented about food choices that were good for every day, instead of expecting foods that would have been candy-like, every day.

And some preschools took that a little further. Some encouraged their children by showing them the work that goes into cooking from scratch, and the fun in participating. That's something that has the potential to help a child develop, from an early age, in so many ways!

Just a few strengths built by participating in food-preparation tasks:

• Having stronger fine-motor skills (Fine-motor skills are those that give us dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and overall control of small muscles, including those muscles that help us use our fingers. Internet sources like WebMD say we need fine-motor skills in order to stir or mix food, for example, and imply early development of those skills helps better suit us for more complex tasks, such as playing instruments or participating in sports. But that's not all!);

• Having more aptitude to stand or sit still to engage in a task;

• Developing an ability to keep on task longer;

• Being better able to do coordinated, start-and-stop tasks (such as pressing a rolling pin to start, and quickly stopping to change direction);

• Having an overall awareness that food needs work to prepare;

• Knowing it's fun to complete tasks in a group setting;

• And beginning to know there's more to our day-to-day than just eating whatever we see!

It takes thought to make our meals, and to make food more healthy (and tasty). But I do not mean to say we have to have perfect diets, low-fat everything, or anything else on that order.

Instead, I want to say, we can do better at with our everyday ways of living! We can be more aware and active in living a little better.

We don't have to be vegan. We don't have to have organic. We don't need expensive. And we don't have to ban butter and buttermilk. We just need to be more aware.

We may need to recognize there's not one fresh fruit on God's green earth, that will give anyone diabetes!

And we need to maybe think things like: That old, family teacake recipe is naturally low on sugar; the small ratio of sugar to flour makes it nearly two times lower on sugar than a sugar cookie; it has only half a cup of traditional buttermilk (spread over 40 to 50 cookies!); and it's tastier than bread, because of the citrus juice in the traditional buttermilk, and because the just right amount of butter and sugar combine and caramelize. It's a perfect occasional treat, without changing anything about it. It's much lower on butter and uses a healthier flour than croissants do. And it's better to have that SOMETIMES, than lots of factory-made cinnamon sticks from Pizza Hut.

We need to maybe know a little more about how we digest one food compared to another. And we just need to want better in our every day.

Amen?

Above All: Faith, Our Life and Our Covering

  

In troubled times, we may feel out of communion or severed from the vine we've known as life in Jesus. Situations may cause us to feel so far removed from Him, that we wonder when His love, truth, and unadulterated faith will walk this earth again.

We can't be certain whether prayers should be for His soon return, or for our deliverance back into the church uncorrupted. And we do not know whether to expect His return — or our deliverance from sins as the church — to be through Jesus, the Savior, in a person, or through Jesus, the Savior *, in a people. But we know, with certainty, this one thing:

But as for me, I know my Redeemer liveth, and at last He will stand upon the earth.

Job 19:25

Remember: In Him is true life, and He is meant to live in each of us as Christians.

 

 

***

* I can't be sure of A. G. Lotz's meaning, when she says our Heavenly maker is "racial." But I think maybe she means He created us; knows us; knew us long before we were born; knew how we would evolve as families of people (because, truly, we belong to only one "race" — the human race, and, spiritually, we are only one church); and that He smiled upon our ethnic diversity (not our sins!), the way a gardener smiles inwardly, knowing the diverse beauty his crops will produce.

Escaping Lies that Rob Us

 

 

Did you know U.S. President Harry Truman spent eleven years, as a young man, feeding cattle, gathering milk, and working in his family kitchen? He was a farmer who decided not to be a banker. And he isn't the only one.

At least 15 U.S. presidents were ranchers or dirt farmers, including father and son John Adams and John Quincy Adams. The 15 also include four who were in office during my lifetime; although, we cannot say Ronald Reagan was among those four. Reagan's ranch was a retreat, instead of a farm.

But Lyndon "LBJ" Johnson, who finished as president in 1969, kept in close contact with his farming business while in office. And he invited at least one foreign leader to visit.

More humbly, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, and Theodore Roosevelt, were quiet about their farm work — and Jefferson kept ranching, and Roosevelt kept farming, hands on, after the White House.

Of special note, Lincoln was so understanding of the importance of farming, that he gave our nation the Land Grants that established universities as centers for agricultural research and rural outreach and support.

Maybe two or three other of the 15 were more business managers than they ever were hands-on farmers. That includes men like James Monroe, whose Charlottesville, Virginia enterprise was built on slave labor.

A Higher Calling

But George Washington's is a more elusive story. Maybe we can't entirely be sure of Washington's role as a farmer. But we know he wasn't a perfect man. We know he had a mistress. We don't know his heart of repentance. Yet, we know he had some measure of Christian faith.

His faith was not full with spiritual sight. Washington apparently didn't understand the Christian church is the "seed of Abraham," spiritually.

Instead, he believed — with childlike faith — that those still in the Hebrew tradition were Abraham's "stock" or seed. And he felt they were blessed as such.

Yet, as a subtext, I get the feeling Washington may have seen some American slaves as destined for inheritance in Christ. And I get the feeling he saw himself as a tutor or parental figure — a shepherd — in the lives of some of those who lived at the Mount Vernon plantation he was faithful to steward or to own.

According to brief information at mountvernon.org, Washington was sympathetic toward slaves and wanted freedom for them. In the story of one Mt. Vernon slave, a seamstress, there was only one whipping in 14 years, and that was with a twig from a hickory tree.

Mt. Vernon slaves tended to be social and visited family and friends at other plantations. They worked hard and apparently were not punished for frequent, small thefts in course of working.

Many also apparently attended church services at local sites away from the plantation.

Washington and wife, Martha, again seemed sympathetic. Washington had inherited the plantation and the slave tradition while he was a young child. Martha had inherited slaves, by law, as part of her late husband's estate. Both seemed to want freedom for the slaves, but, by will — or law — only Washington's slaves (not those from Martha's late husband's estate) were able to be freed upon Washington's death.

And, while he still lived on this side of life, Washington seemed to recognize the law would be hard on slaves were they to escape his watch. His interest in reclaiming one escaped slave, may have been to ensure the boy would not be mistreated. When Washington posted a newspaper article asking for the boy's safe return, he was obligated, under law, to say the boy was his "property."

I think it's possible the very few adult slaves who did "escape" Mt. Vernon, may have been allowed to leave, on purpose. Otherwise, Washington seemed to have Christian hope for those who had refuge there.

I suspect Washington unwittingly had the same hope for slaves at Mt. Vernon as he had for those souls he thought were the "stock" of Abraham, as an article at mountvernon.org may imply. This article may imply that Washington secretly wanted slaves to have their own plots of land, based on the Bible prophecy that says, "but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid."

Washington, in his heart of hearts, known only to God, may have wanted emancipated slaves to enjoy the same fruits as those he thought were Abraham's "stock."

Washinton's Mt. Vernon and its legacy was the exception in early American life — not the rule. In fact, in the brutal South, the law didn't allow slaves to read and write. But George Washington, upon being appointed to lead the Continental Army during the American Revolution, was kind toward Massachusetts slave Phillis Wheatley, who dedicated a poem to his appointment.

It's hard to imagine anyone from Mt. Vernon was denied the human right to read and learn, but I imagine fear of the law kept the Washingtons quiet about any learning among those of whom maybe they considered themselves guardians.

After all, the New Testament holds that the law is only temporary in the believer's life, but then comes awareness, independence, and freedom, including freedom to apply one's knowledge.

 

Escaping Today's Madness

I don't know about anyone else, but I, for one, am weary of today's reverse racism. I'm tired of the devil's accusations toward every person or group who isn't on a "progressive" platform.

I'm weary of accusations that every thing of American legacy is evil, when in fact it's the accuser who often is on the side of evil!

Recently, in our city in Louisiana, a Civil War commemorative monument was removed from the courthouse lawn. And that was well and good. But, now, there are gripes that a gracious, old oak tree at the courthouse is at least symbolic of a past lynching. Some even accuse the tree of being the actual tool of an old, publicized lynching.

But those accusers are souls tormented by the troubled, long-ago past. Those are souls who haven't known the truth, light, and wisdom of Christ Jesus. Those are souls too tormented by evil thoughts, to recognize Jews, Methodists, Presbyterians, and Baptists alike were a past council for good in cities like ours, and that faith could get things done, quietly (including the removal of a wronged tree).

Just think: There has been as much good in our history, as there has been evil.

After all, without light and faith in Jesus, nothing would have prospered for us as a nation, today's darkness would have eclipsed our faith long ago — and the devil's schemes to destroy our faith memories, to hollow and decay our souls, to corrupt Christian marriages, to change our children, to end devout living among unmarried people, to subject us to hell as a way of life, and to end freewill doings in favor of socialism, all would have taken much of the church long ago.

The Bible does warn against a time when the church deliberately would be worn down, when sanctification would be worn out; and it appears in many ways, that we may be at that day.

"But thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Corinthians 15:57)

Faithful, Green Grandmother

 

 

One of us remembers a garden in the fertile soil of the alley behind the back fence. Another of us remembers gardens were kept near the clothes-drying lines in the back yard, and also near the street inside the nextdoor neighbors' fence. The nextdoor neighbors, the Greens, let grandpa garden in their treeless yard, I'm assuming so he would have more daylight than under his pecan trees in the alley and back yard.

But it wasn't community gardening. It was just living. And one of my younger cousins was so fond of the childhood memory, that she has based her career on the memory.

Our grandparents were equal parts faithful and earthy, I think. My grandpa, from a distance across the den, could smell like the earth of the back yard, instead of like the petro plant where he worked. His car also smelled earthy.

My grandmother also had distinctive odors about her: usually the smell of garlic and a pleasant bacteria that seemed to be particular to her. You see, she didn't use antibacterial soaps, nor very much bleach, ever.

My grandmother was "green" long before green living became popular. She used simple Ivory soap for washing up, and dishwater and products like vinegar, soda, and Comet for cleaning. And her house smelled like nothing. Her linens and house were odorless, except for cooking. ... Grandmother didn't need cleaning chemicals and fabric softeners, and I never knew her or my grandpa to get sick, not even when she was taking care of a sick grandchild.

Believe it or not, being in the outdoors, close to the earth, and having a diet rich in garlic and fresh vegetables from rich soil and good sun, helped my grandparents, and others nearby, to thrive.

Not being exposed to a lot of cleaning chemicals that cause normal, healthy, disease-fighting bacteria to die, also was probably a help to my grandparents and other elders. The healthy bacteria that thrived in garden soils, not only likely killed unhealthy germs from animals, but probably also helped boost my grandparents' natural immunity.

In fact, some soil bacteria, in places throughout the earth, is so potent with good bacteria, that a few scientists believe they are getting closer to defeating some types of infections that are difficult to get rid of. That's probably why many of the Irish have believed the soils of their homelands are nearly sacred — because those soils had been curative in the ancient and even recent past.

But if the science of healthy soil is not enough proof of God's blessing on a heritage of rich earth, try to believe on the way Jesus opened the eyes of a man who was blind, apparently from an infection.

Jesus put mud — from a certain place, not an infested place — onto the man's eyes. (We don't know for how long.) And, of course, Jesus being God with us, the man was healed.