Mission Faithwalk

              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...

                 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 4:6) It has been a tough few days. Wednesday night, my “good” knee became my “bad” knee in a melodramatic incident. I handled the emergency fairly well, I think, but it’s taken several days to my knee to recover to the point that it has, which isn’t quite where I’d like it. I had downs and ups about an assigned article and my story, but I thought I was doing better. On Sunday morning, my pastor preached a great sermon about hope. Then I came home, and things slowly failed to be as productive as I wanted. It doesn’t help that I started into a process online that just can’t be simple. No great surprise, really. But by bedtime, I had spiraled down into anxiety. No great surprise, really. I prayed. I whined. I screamed in silence. And this morning I got up with my...

                 At the end of every seven years you must cancel debts. (Deuteronomy 15:1) This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing. Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.   Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. (Romans 13:6-8) How long has it been since you cancelled debts? I know we love the idea of having our debts cancelled. Buy a brand-new house and vehicle and pay on them for only 7 years. Or, better yet, buy them at 6.5 years through the cycle and only pay for 6 months! I don’t think it would work that way, but we like the idea. And, as for the forgiving debts others owe me, well, I don’t have the money to lend, so that is a non-issue. ...

                 G ive thanks to the Lord, for he is good.   His love endures forever. (Psalm 136:1, 36) Words of Affirmation Acts of Service Receiving Gifts Quality Time Physical Touch             According to Gary Chapman in his 1992 book, The Five Love Languages , these are the five ways that people communicate the love to one another. You have a “native” love language. Do you know what it is? If not, here’s the official web page for the quiz (among others): Discover Your Love Language® - The 5 Love Languages® (Official Quiz)             I’m sharing that with you because if love languages exist (and I believe they do), God invented them. He speaks each of them fluently, but I doubt He speaks to you in only one of them. There’s one you are likely to recognize best.       ...

                 This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance. (Exodus 12:14) By the time you read this, it will be the day after Black Friday. You will have lived through three of the four major holidays of the fall: Halloween, Thanksgiving, and the aforementioned Black Friday. There’s only one left. Are you already exhausted? The only parallel I can think of is that we have Memorial Day in May, Flag Day in June, and Independence Day in July, but we can decorate once for all three, and we don’t tend to give presents. I’ll grant, however, that there are still people who decorate graves for or by Memorial Day, and that can create some stress. Maybe it’s just the former corporate retail employee in me. Of course, today’s verse is not about Christmas, but Christmas has become one of the festivals we feel obligated to celebrate. And ...

              Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. (Colossians 3:16)           My first thought on reading this is that Paul must have heard some of the singing of the Colossians. Or maybe Paul had heard his own singing. “Yes, sing in your heart .” Or maybe he knew some of the Colossians were embarrassed about their singing even if it wasn’t as bad as they thought. The problem with that is that he’d just gotten done saying “teach and admonish one another…through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit.           A better explanation is that there would likely be places where singing with their mouths could get them killed or (at the very least) be inappropriate. If singing with their mouths was...

                   Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, (Hebrews 12:28)           We’ve made it to the big day , the day on which we should be supremely thankful. And I’ll get back to the gratitude in a moment. First, the author of Hebrews tells us one reason we should be thankful: we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken. Can you imagine? I don’t think I can remember a time, at least as an adult, when my kingdom or the “kingdoms” of my hometown, my county, my state, my nation, or the kingdom of man were unshakable. Even looking at God’s Kingdom, we can see what we think are symptoms of shakiness. Lucifer and his followers rebelled. Man sinned. Jesus had to die. There’s are wars and rumors of wars, and there are prophecies of an upcoming war. We have been told that He will win...

                 And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17)           “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” We’ve all heard some variation of this saying. I like the version that uses double negatives: “If you don’t have nothing good to say, don’t say nothing,” but that doesn’t mean what we want it to mean. Another somewhat similar instruction is “Be nice.” The problem with all these sorts of instructions, including, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, is definition. What constitutes something “good to say”? Or “Nice”? And what if what you would have others do to you is to leave you alone, but the person next door wants people to stop by and chat?             The greatest commandment, acco...

                     And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. (Colossians 3:17)           “If you don’t have anything good to say, don’t say anything.” We’ve all heard some variation of this saying. I like the version that uses double negatives: “If you don’t have nothing good to say, don’t say nothing,” but that doesn’t mean what we want it to mean. Another somewhat similar instruction is “Be nice.” The problem with all these sorts of instructions, including, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”, is definition. What constitutes something “good to say”? Or “Nice”? And what if what you would have others do to you is to leave you alone, but the person next door wants people to stop by and chat?             The greatest com...

                 So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness. (Colossians 2:6-7) I wish I were really up on all the terminology for verb tenses and forms because this verse seems to bounce among them. I doubt the terminology would really help. What we need to understand from the verbs is that something happened in the past that should be continuing in the present with both present and future results. Some of it happened to us, and some of it is what we are to do. If we are going to continue to do something, we must do it as we were doing it before or as we were doing something before. How did we receive Christ Jesus as Lord? By faith. By the hearing of the Word. How are we to live our lives in him and be built up in him? By faith and by its strengthening. By hearing the Word. After a...

            Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise; give thanks to him and praise his name. For the Lord is good and his love endures forever; his faithfulness continues through all generations. (Psalm 100:4-5)           Have you ever really thought about the Psalms? I mean, we’re talking about 150 chapters, one of which is 176 verses long (Psalm 119). Psalm 14 and Psalm 52 are similar enough that one might think one or the other is plagiarized, and I doubt this is the only case of repetition. Sometimes, they call on us to praise God. Other times, they call on God to shatter the teeth of our enemies. They can be an emotional rollercoaster, at the highest of highs one moment, and inconsolable the next. One will proclaim the blamelessness of the psalmist, and the next will confess his sins. To say that they’re all over the place is not an exaggeration. But perh...

                 Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, since as members of one body you were called to peace. And be thankful. (Colossians 3:15) Let: 1) To cause or to make, 2) give opportunity to or fail to prevent, 3) to free from, or as if from confinement, 4) to permit to enter, pass, or leave There are more definitions for the word let but the point in providing the definitions is that in this verse, it probably doesn’t mean passively failing to prevent. You may need to grant peace permission to enter, but I suspect it’s more active than that. We’re to cause or make the peace of Christ to rule in our hearts. I’ve written before about causing anger to rule in my heart back in my teens and twenties. I encouraged it. There were times I probably picked anger up by the scruff of its neck, carried it into my heart, locked the door, dropped the mangy creature in the middle of the room. There was a time, much later, when I conc...

                I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— (I Corinthians 1:4-5)           I read this verse in the middle of the night, and thought, “Oh, those proud Corinthians, I don’t have anything to say about this passage.” This morning as I looked at it again, I thought, “Ugh. I haven’t been enriched that way.” The green-eyed dragon peeks out from behind my eyes. It doesn’t help that most of the non-cashiers I work with are far more knowledgeable and/or skilled than I am. While I made wreaths, they were decorating them and/or talking about floral breeding programs and sideline businesses they’ve done. Don’t get me wrong, I’m honored to work with them and I’m thrilled to be learning how to make wreaths, but yesterday, I walked away feeling like the charity case...

                   Come, let us sing for joy to the Lord; let us shout aloud to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song. (Psalm 95:1-2)           I don’t know if I keep coming back to it in this blog, or if I just keep coming back to it. If I’m being too repetitious, feel free to tell me so. But today’s passage, chosen by my Bible platform, brings me back. First, it invites us to sing for joy to the Lord, which refers to His authority, sovereignty, and divine rule. Then it invites us to show to the Rock of our salvation. A rock is that on which we can stand and build. I don’t think there’s really any doubt that these verses refer to God, but they also give us at least a partial definition of what a god is. A god is our Lord, the authority over our lives, that which rules in and over our live, and ultimately, over the un...

                 Desire without knowledge is not good — how much more will hasty feet miss the way! (Proverbs 19:2) What did you want to be when you grew up? I went through lots of phases: cop, doctor, superhero, lawyer, Enterprise crew member, singer, wildlife manager/ranger, and astronomer, among others. Most of those ideas sort of faded away quietly. The one that I remember thinking through before I changed my mind was the wildlife manager idea. What I wanted was to be Grizzly Adams – to go make friends with the critters. However, knowledge got in the way. I have allergies. I am not fond of extreme temperatures.  At the time, I wasn’t all that keen on getting dirty or encountering bugs (especially spiders!) And I didn’t want to shoot a critter and take it out to the boonies to release it. For that matter, if I shot at a critter, the trees or a fellow ranger would be more likely to get tranquillized than the critter. My kn...

              " Now fear the Lord and serve him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.    But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods!   It was the Lord our God himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. And the Lord drove out before us al...

                 The Gibeonites then sent word to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal: “Do not abandon your servants. Come up to us quickly and save us! Help us, because all the Amorite kings from the hill country have joined forces against us.” So Joshua marched up from Gilgal with his entire army, including all the best fighting men. The Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid of them; I have given them into your hand. Not one of them will be able to withstand you.” After an all-night march from Gilgal, Joshua took them by surprise. The Lord threw them into confusion before Israel, so Joshua and the Israelites defeated them completely at Gibeon. Israel pursued them along the road going up to Beth Horon and cut them down all the way to Azekah and Makkedah.   As they fled before Israel on the road down from Beth Horon to Azekah, the Lord hurled large ha...

    Now when all the kings west of the Jordan heard about these things—the kings in the hill country, in the western foothills, and along the entire coast of the Mediterranean Sea as far as Lebanon (the kings of the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites)— they came together to wage war against Joshua and Israel. However, when the people of Gibeon heard what Joshua had done to Jericho and Ai, they resorted to a ruse: They went as a delegation whose donkeys were loaded [ a ]  with worn-out sacks and old wineskins, cracked and mended.   They put worn and patched sandals on their feet and wore old clothes. All the bread of their food supply was dry and moldy. Then they went to Joshua in the camp at Gilgal and said to him and the Israelites, “We have come from a distant country; make a treaty with us.”   The Israelites said to the Hivites, “But perhaps you live near us, s...

              Then the Lord said to Joshua, “Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged. Take the whole army with you, and go up and attack Ai. For I have delivered into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land. You shall do to Ai and its king as you did to Jericho and its king, except that you may carry off their plunder and livestock for yourselves. Set an ambush behind the city.” So Joshua and the whole army moved out to attack Ai. He chose thirty thousand of his best fighting men and sent them out at nigh 4  with these orders: “Listen carefully. You are to set an ambush behind the city. Don’t go very far from it. All of you be on the alert. I and all those with me will advance on the city, and when the men come out against us, as they did before, we will flee from them. They will pursue us until we have lured them away from the city, for they will say, ‘Th...

  But the Israelites were unfaithful in regard to the devoted things; Achan son of Karmi, the son of Zimri, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah, took some of them. So the  Lord ’s anger burned against Israel. Now Joshua sent men from Jericho to Ai, which is near Beth Aven to the east of Bethel, and told them, “Go up and spy out the region.” So the men went up and spied out Ai. When they returned to Joshua, they said, “Not all the army will have to go up against Ai. Send two or three thousand men to take it and do not weary the whole army, for only a few people live there.”   So about three thousand went up; but they were routed by the men of Ai,   who killed about thirty-six of them. They chased the Israelites from the city gate as far as the stone quarries and struck them down on the slopes. At this the hearts of the people melted in fear and became like water.   Then Joshua tore his clothes...

            Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?” “Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Then Joshua fell facedown to the ground in reverence, and asked him, “What message does my Lord have for his servant?” The commander of the Lord’s army replied, “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” And Joshua did so. Now the gates of Jericho were securely barred because of the Israelites. No one went out and no one came in. Then the Lord said to Joshua, “See, I have delivered Jericho into your hands, along with its king and its fighting men.    March around the city once with all the armed men. Do this for six days.    Have seven pri...

            Now when all the Amorite kings west of the Jordan and all the Canaanite kings along the coast heard how the Lord had dried up the Jordan before the Israelites until they had crossed over, their hearts melted in fear and they no longer had the courage to face the Israelites.   At that time the Lord said to Joshua, “Make flint knives and circumcise the Israelites again.” So Joshua made flint knives and circumcised the Israelites at Gibeath Haaraloth. Now this is why he did so: All those who came out of Egypt—all the men of military age—died in the wilderness on the way after leaving Egypt. All the people that came out had been circumcised, but all the people born in the wilderness during the journey from Egypt had not.    The Israelites had moved about in the wilderness forty years until all the men who were of military age when they left Egypt ...