Skip to main content

Hold On!

            In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evildoers and impostors will go from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived. But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of, because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (II Timothy 3:12-17)

          Yes, tough times happen in the lives of those who wish to live a godly life in Christ Jesus. They get persecuted. Tough times also take happen in the lives of those who do evil and pretend to be someone they aren’t. They go from bad to worse. So, what’s the solution? Hold on. Continue. Fasten your seat belt.

          Specifically, hold on to what you’ve learned from people you trust. Hold on to Scripture. This is an especially important bit of advice in a time in which it seems that people call themselves Christians for any of a number of reasons that have nothing to do with following Christ. Some suggest we should pitch 99% of the Bible into the fire, keeping only those parts that make them feel good. It doesn’t matter to them what Moses, Peter, Paul, John, or even Jesus taught, outside of a few cherry-picked maxims that they’ve twisted. One of the big bits of twisting that has infiltrated much of our society is the idea that Emperor Constantine dreamed up Christianity as we know it today. Another favorite was the one I heard from a girl in college – that King James inserted all of the warnings about witches. It doesn’t matter that much of the Bible as we know it today has been traced back and checked against documents that predate the King James version. 

          One of the bits of advice given by investment counselors is that you buy stocks for the long-term. You don’t buy and sell based on every tiny breeze in the sails of the market. The same is true of your faith. It matters greatly what you believe – but in another sense, it doesn’t matter what you believe. If you change your beliefs based on every tiny breeze in the sails of your life, you’re going to have a storm-tossed life and no real hope for the future. If you hold onto Scripture, you’ll have a storm-tossed life, perhaps, but a strong hope for the future.

         

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more