The Elephant In The Room

To quote a line from one a great movie, The Princess Bride, “Let me 'splain. [pause] No, there is too much. Let me sum up.”  There is much on this subject that I would like to make clear, but to do so would be an exhausting effort, so let me make a clarifying statement and then make my point.  I have positional issues with some of the men I am about to agree with that would cause me not to have a close working or fellowshipping relationship with.  I think they are men who love God but we have things that separate us.  They are New Evangelicals, Emerging Church, Southern Baptist, Non King James, etc. etc. etc.  With that said, I LOVE WHAT THESE GUYS DID!!!!!  

James MacDonald, Matt Chandler, Mark Driscoll, Steven Furtick, Greg Laurie, Perry Noble, and David Platt all sat down and had a huge discourse over what they agreed and disagreed with each other on.  They called it, "The Elephant In The Room" and  they filmed it and put it out in public for people to watch.  Again back to the clarification statement (I know what I believe and what I practice), so I am not talking about the content of their discussion I am talking about the tone and tenor of their discussion.  They took some strong positions against each other but still treated each other with respect and kindness, dare I say even as Christians should.  They called each other out on statements made, books written, and positions held but they were not unkind or hateful.  Most of all THEY SAID IT TO THEIR FACE!!!!!  Not in some “open letter”, or in a not so vague pulpit comment, paper, magazine, blog post, or in some chat room, they SAID IT TO THEIR FACE with specific references of when and where something was said.  Not a clip posted on You Tube cut out of context, or half a truth, or one statement taken out of a life time of refuting statements. They called each other on the phone, they discussed it privately  behind closed doors and then openly to for people to see and hear. 

They all walked away still holding their same positions as when they entered but they knew why the other said what he said or what the context was.  Their minds were not changed about the statement or the doctrinal position they held, but they had a better understanding of the reason.  Fundamentalism has never been about full agreement on every issue in the world but on the cardinal doctrine of the faith.  John Rice, Bob Jones, Lester Roloff, Jack Hyles, J Frank. Norris, Curtis Hutson, Tom Malone Sr., Roy Thompson, G. B. Vick, B. R. Lakin, and on and on each held different positions over some issues.  But it did not hinder the fact that they loved each other, prayed for each other, preached for and with each other, and allowed God to use them in what would be the greatest days of evangelism and missionary endeavors.  Again, this not about position, this is about spirit and attitude.  Hold your position but don’t get a bad disposition.  Don’t make it a personal and ugly campaign to destroy a man or ministry you do not agree with. 

Yesterday I talked to my best friend in the ministry.  There are some things we don’t agree on but there are so many things we do agree on!  True friends are hard to find and I am not looking to lose them needlessly.  We learned if you have a problem talk about it openly, Biblically, and as Christians who love the Lord and each other.  Don’t assume, attack, or assassinate, instead ask questions.  You may not like the answers but you do not have to unlike your friend or colleague.  We have been down the road together and both still hold and believe the same eternal truths.  He doesn’t like some things I do, I don’t like some things he does, but we do love each other in the Lord!

These men that I mentioned showed us that we can be very different on a position or issue but very kind at the same time.  Fundamentalism needs to learn to express itself on the issues not at the personal level.  I may not like what you do but I do not have to hate you.  One of the marks of fundamentalism has always been our strong personalities.  Unfortunately we have bred an environment of attacking people not positions.  Stay focused on the position and not the personality because in the end an attack on a personality will come back to destroy you personally. 

Mercy Me

“Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matt. 5:7)

Thank God for His mercy in our lives. We all talk about it, hear it preached and are thankful for it. But do we really know what mercy is?

Mercy is not a pardon. As we know from examples in recent history, a pardon occurs when a person is found guilty of something but is set free by a higher authority, usually after a conviction and sentencing. The most newsworthy pardons for many of us are those of Richard Nixon (by President Gerald Ford) in 1975 and Scooter Libby (by President George W. Bush) in 2007.

Mercy is not acquittal. That is a finding of absence of guilt, whether through insufficient evidence or a jury decision. Acquittals happen to guilty people, as most of America believes occurred in the O.J. Simpson murder trial in the 1990s.

Mercy is not parole. After being sentenced for a crime, a person often is released after serving a portion of that sentence behind bars. Parole can be awarded for good behavior or other circumstances.

So what is mercy, especially for the sinner? Mercy is applied when you do not get what you rightfully deserve from God, and then you live your Christian life in such a way that you do not seek vengeance or vindication – returning evil for good.

The truth is that every one of us is a guilty sinner who deserves God’s wrath. “The wrath of God abideth on him” that does not seek Christ, according to John 3:36. But God has chosen not to give us what we deserve if we accept Him. Then, God says, “Because I have chosen to demonstrate mercy to you, I want you to demonstrate mercy to others.”

In contrast, justice is the act of getting exactly what we deserve. You rarely see someone who knows he is guilty stand before a judge and say, “Give me justice.” But we are all quite familiar with the phrase, “I throw myself on the mercy of the court.”

When I was a student I often heard a Christian school teacher pray, “Lord, help these students perform on this test according to how they studied.” That is the most ridiculous thing a teacher in a Christian school could say. A more appropriate prayer would be, “Lord, show mercy to these students as they take this test, because most of them have not studied as they should.”

So while justice is getting what you deserve and mercy is not getting what you deserve, grace occurs when God gives you something extra that you don’t deserve. God demonstrates mercy by not sending you to Hell if you accept Christ, and He demonstrates grace by giving you Heaven, the Holy Spirit, the Bible and all of the wonderful things of God. We should thank Him daily for His mercy and grace.

God’s mercy is factual. He knows that you are a sinner. Not only has He always known you are a sinner, He also knows the sins you haven’t committed yet. Most of us think that we confess our sins so we can clear the slate with God, but we fail to understand that Christ died on the cross for all of our sins – past, present and future. Before He laid the foundation of the world, God knew what you were going to do. But if God brings mercy, Satan will bring guilt. You can count on it.

God’s mercy is full. It is a complete demonstration, not a partial one. Either you are forgiven or you are not. There is no “half” mercy with God.

God’s mercy is forever. We live in a time where some men preach that you can do so things that get you so out of favor with God that He takes your name out of the Lamb’s Book of Life. That is not true. When God gives you mercy, you have it forever.

There are a number of instances in the Bible that illustrate mercy. In I Samuel 24 we see David, a good man who was despised and marked for death because of the jealousy of King Saul. While Saul had taken his entire army out to hunt David down and kill him, God turned the tables as only He can. David and a few of his men found themselves standing over the sleeping body of Saul. None of Saul’s men had a clue.

One of David’s men asked, “Should I kill him?” David said no. He knew that he was not to touch God’s anointed. We are conditioned to think that if we have that kind of bitter mortal enemy, the only to stop him is by killing him, because he is not going to rest until he has killed you. David could have eliminated all of his problems by killing Saul, but he didn’t. He demonstrated mercy.

Most of us think that if we can just get rid of So-and-so, it would fix our problem. But God says, “No. Show mercy.”

In Acts 7, Stephen was stoned to death for nothing more than believing in Christ and telling others about Him. As these large rocks were pummeling him, breaking his bones and his teeth, causing him to fall to the ground in a bloody heap, he could have cried out, “Lord, vindicate me! Rain your vengeance down from Heaven!” But he didn’t do that. Instead, Acts 7:60 recounts this prayer: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.”

Of course, the ultimate example of this type of mercy is Jesus Christ, who hung on a cross as wicked sinners mocked and spat upon Him. His response is recorded in Luke 23:34. “Father, forgive them: for they know not what they do.”

Mercy is not an easy thing to administer. When you offend me or hurt me or my family, my natural reaction is to bring vengeance upon you. But the Bible teaches us to do exactly the opposite.

When you get saved, you receive God’s mercy. After you get saved, you must live to experience God’s mercy. The problem for many of us is that we receive His mercy but have trouble experiencing it or living in it. But we also are commanded to share God’s mercy with others.

Every one of you reading these words has probably committed some sin that would destroy you if evidence of it were displayed for the world to see. I have a feeling that, in the deep recesses of your mind, there are some things that you don’t want anyone to know about.

There have been occasions in my life, even recently, where I was on such a high in the things of God but then had a thought so wicked that I wondered how a person could even be saved and think like that. There are people who have served God faithfully for decades but still have Satan remind them of sins from 30 or 40 years ago. No one remembers your sin in those situations except you and the Devil.

The Bible has several things to say about what happens to your sin. Is. 43:25 says, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” God Himself has blotted out your sin, never to remember it anymore.

Look at Is. 44:22. “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud thy sins: return unto me, for I have redeemed thee.” The Lord can no longer see your sin because it is covered with a cloud that cannot be penetrated.

God doesn’t know what you did because He has chosen not to remember it. Your sin has been removed from the mind of God.

The Bible says in Ps. 103:10-14, “He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us. Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust.”

He has removed our sins from the east to the west, which have no point of origin. We know where the north and the south begin, but not the east and the west. God has thrown your sins out through the timeline of eternity in two separate directions, and they can never be found because there is no end to eternity.

Micah 7:19 says, “He will turn again, he will have compassion upon us; he will subdue our iniquities; and thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.” I have heard that there are caverns and holes at the bottom of the ocean that cannot be traversed by man with all of his present technology. No one knows for sure why those places exist, but my personal theory is that God has made some places so remote, and He does not allow man to acquire the wisdom necessary to get there, because there are some things down there I did when I was a boy and God doesn’t want anyone to ever bring them up again.

Look at Is. 38:17. “Behold, for peace I had great bitterness: but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption: for thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back.” Now that doesn’t sound as cool as some of these other examples, but think about how hard it is to get something off your back. Every time you turn around, your back turns around also. God does this because He doesn’t want to find it again. When we bury the hatchet, we mark the spot so we can retrieve the hatchet if we want to. God puts something behind Him and never goes back. He is always going forward.

Jer. 31:34 says, “And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity and I will remember their sin no more.” When you pray and ask God to forgive you for that sin you committed yesterday, God is able to say, “What sin are you talking about?” He has the divine ability to forget because all of our sins were covered by the blood of Christ when we were saved.

When you ask God to “forgive” you of your sin, you are acknowledging before Him that you know you have done wrong. He has already forgiven you; you are just coming to grips with it yourself. You are agreeing with God that you have done something that grieves His spirit, so you can restore fellowship with Him.

When you hit an emotional high after several days in a revival meeting, Satan comes along to slow things down by hitting you with things you did last week, last month or 10 years ago. The Devil is the only one who reminds you of your past. You need to remind him of his future and let him know what God has done for you through His mercy.

Too many of you are like Pilgrim in “Pilgrim’s Progress,” who walks under the weight of his sin throughout the story before coming to Calvary and trusting Christ as his Saviour. The big difference is that Pilgrim leaves that weight at the foot of the cross and you insist on continuing to carry yours, making it difficult if not impossible to have a joyous Christian life because you are weighted down with the guilt of the past.

As far as God’s view of your sin is concerned, you don’t have any past. It’s been blotted out and washed in the blood.

We don’t enjoy the forgiveness we receive from God as we live the Christian life. Every step we take, the Lord tells us, “Come on, you can do this,” and Satan says, “No, you can’t.” We can’t serve God because of what we did 20 years ago. You cannot live a victorious life and have the joy of the Lord while carrying the guilt of the past.

Much of the counseling I do today concerns things that people should have gotten over a long time ago. People think they can’t be used of God because of past addictions, or their current marriage can’t work because of problems or mistakes that ended a previous marriage.

People who don’t experience forgiveness are always defensive and self-conscious. They take everything as a personal attack. I can be talking to a fellow church member about the weather, and someone else who sees us thinks that we are gossiping about him. A defensive person thinks the whole world revolves around him and his little problems, and an innocent comment is taken as a frontal assault. You think everyone sees your baggage, when in reality you are the only one who sees it.

A person without forgiveness has a defeated spirit. Full of moodiness and negativity, he is high one minute and low the next. Sometimes you will bask in His majestic glory and let go of those burdens for just a little while. But you always pick them back up. You build your life on what other people do to help you with your burden that you shouldn’t even be carrying in the first place.

Someone without forgiveness deals totally in the realm of feeling and not in fact. Your entire attitude rises and falls on how you felt when you woke up this morning or what kind of song you just heard on the radio. Let me help you right here. I don’t feel saved half the time, but I know I’m saved because God said so.

If I had to rely on feelings, I would only preach every other Sunday. If I only read my Bible when I felt like it, I would get through Genesis and Exodus before dying in Leviticus. If I only came to Sunday school when I felt like it, you wouldn’t see me there very often.

When we operate on feelings, the smallest thing will make us stop doing what we’re supposed to do. We let a bad feeling keep us home from a revival meeting. We hear something negative and it ruins our entire day. You cannot let circumstances dictate what you are going to do for God. But people who don’t live in forgiveness carry around a load that makes them susceptible to anything.

Even worse, most of them consistently doubt their salvation. Sometimes Satan comes along and tells me that I’m not saved. “A saved person wouldn’t do that or watch that or think that,” he says. But my salvation doesn’t depend on how I feel or what I’m doing; it is totally dependent upon what Jesus Christ did on the cross of Calvary when He offered me an eternal pardon through His mercy and grace.

If you have a defeated attitude, you will second-guess yourself every time you hear a sermon about lost church members because you keep dragging around all of that sin and letting it control your life.

People without forgiveness in their own lives will deny forgiveness to others. Some of you are hesitant to forgive your spouse or your children for the smallest thing because you are not experiencing and enjoying forgiveness in your own life, and you can’t demonstrate what you don’t know.

The biggest culprit in this kind of defeated life is Satan, whom the Bible calls “the accuser of our brethren” in Rev. 12:10. His greatest tool is your past. Your own actions and failures also play a role, along with your bad attitude that keeps you thinking you can’t have victory.

If I didn’t believe you can have victory, I would quit preaching and get out of church today (and I would encourage you to go along with me). But I am convinced that there is victory in Jesus Christ, and He will do everything He wants to do in your life if you will just let Him.

Don’t give me some ridiculous excuse about a “disease” you have. Your problem is a sin problem, and I know a Man who came to wash away sin and give you a new life in Him. You may still have some tendencies and sin issues to deal with, but if our God cannot deliver us from what we face, then we don’t have much of a God in the first place. If you know of one person who has gotten victory over a troubled past, then you can rest assured that it is affordable and available to all.

I still have fleshly things that I must deal with, but I don’t crave them like I used to because God has given me victory over them. I have to keep safeguards in place and be careful how I conduct myself, but some of things I used to think I needed to have a happy life just aren’t important at all to me anymore. I don’t give them a second thought.

If you want to get rid of that burden, you need to receive God’s Word as truth with a capital “T.” Christ said in Matt. 16:18, “Upon this rock will I build my church.” Since we also know that “the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” according to John 1:14, then we can take comfort in the fact that we have His Word just as if He were standing right next to us.

Ps. 32:1-5 says, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. I acknowledge my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.”

Your sin is settled and forgiven because God said it. It doesn’t matter what your feelings tell you. What matters is what the Bible tells you. Your feelings will come and go, but God’s Word is settled forever in Heaven.

You need to start refocusing on your future instead of your past. Phil. 3:13-14 says, “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

Too many of you keep staring at the burden behind you and don’t even see the prize ahead of you. You are focusing on what you used to do or should have done and not on what you can and should be doing now and in the future. Wouldn’t you rather focus on the good things God has for you right now?

We need to rely on God’s Word. Col. 3:16 says, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom; teaching and admonishing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord.” The way to keep going as you should is by reading the Bible, hearing it preached, singing about it and meditating on it. Make it the main priority in your life and stop loving the world.

You’ve probably heard the phrase, “He’s so heavenly minded that he’s no earthly good.” That’s one of the most idiotic things ever said. We need more heavenly-mindedness instead of the hell that too many people are going through here on Earth. Just stay in the Word and follow wherever it leads you.

We all know about the infamous rape allegations involving the Duke lacrosse team in 2006. An overzealous prosecutor went too far and the lives of many players were ruined even though the evidence was extremely weak. Once the accusations got out in public, they could never be taken back.

Eventually a higher court got involved and the case was dismissed. But the prosecutor was disbarred and faced variety of civil and criminal charges of his own, partly because the families he had targeted wanted vindication for what he did to those innocent young men.

If you fail to demonstrate mercy, don’t feel too bad when things come around hard on you. I’ve been around long enough to know that the time will come when I desperately need grace and mercy, so I’m going to try to show some of that to people I encounter today.

Make sure you have obtained the mercy of God. You don’t want His justice. Once you have His mercy, see that you share mercy with others as you live your Christian life.

Can A Saved Person Be Lost

In the last 24 hours I have had at least three different people ask me this question.  Below are some thoughts on what it means to be saved and have security in Jesus and not in our ability to keep our own salvation.

Once I am saved, can I ever be lost?  Is “saved today, lost tomorrow” scriptural? 

This what God says:

I have EVERLASTING life.  John 3: 16  For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.

I shall not come into judgment.  John 5: 24  Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

He will in no wise cast me out.  John 6: 37  All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.

Those who have eternal life shall NEVER PERISH.  John 10: 28  And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.

There shall be no CONDEMNATION, no separation ever for the believer in Christ.  Romans 8: 8:1  There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.- 35  Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36  As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. 37  Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. 38  For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39  Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

I am part of His body.  Ephesians 1: 22  And hath put all things under his feet, and gave him to be the head over all things to the church, 23  Which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all.

I am a MEMBER of His Body.  Ephesians 5: 30  For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones.

He will FINISH the job.  Philippians 1: 6  Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:

God is able to KEEP.  2 Timothy 1: 12  For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day.

I am kept by the POWER of GOD.  1 Peter 1: 5  Who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

I am PRESERVED in Christ.  Jude 1  Jude, the servant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, to them that are sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ, and called:

            Read Galatians 6:1 and 2.  Restore is a medical term meaning “to set”, as in the case of a broken arm.  This is a picture of the sinning Christian.  A broken arm is not amputated, even though it is painful, useless, miserable, uncooperative and disobedient to the head. But the same blood is in it as is in the good arm.  Apply this to the spiritual  experience of a Christian who has sinned. 

Galatians 6:1  Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. 2  Bear ye one  burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.

Man cannot lose his salvation because we are saved by Jesus, not because we do not sin-

John 10:27  My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: 28  And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. 29  My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Father's hand. 30  I and my Father are one.

The immediate response is, "so you are saying that if you get saved you have a "get out of jail free card" to sin and live as you want.  The answer is found in Romans 6.

Romans 6:14-16  For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.  (15)  What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.  (16)  Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

Salvation is not a license to sin but it is a radical transformation of the sinner.  

(2 Corinthians 5:17)  Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.

Many people do not have a theological answer for losing your salvation but instead an intellectual one.  They do not understand how a person who is saved can sin and God allow them to be saved.  Instead they need to realize that God saved them as they were sinners, knowing full well what He was saving when He saved them in the first place.  

(Romans 5:8)  But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Eternal security is salvation.  If you are saved you are secure. If you are not secure are you saved?

What Are We Hungry For?

“Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.” (Matt. 5:6)

The hunger and thirst that is referred to in this verse is a desire for the Word of God, a love for the holy writ of Scripture. We’re not talking about learning for the sake of information or mastery of the Bible version of Trivial Pursuit.

I listen sometimes to news programs like “In Search of Jesus” presented by ABC newsman Peter Jennings several years ago, and these shows feature scholars who know so many facts about the Bible but wouldn’t know Jesus if He knocked on their hearts’ door and introduced Himself. These so-called experts are full of information, but they are also full of themselves and empty of God.

Many people like this have much information with no application. Knowing about the Bible and truly knowing the Bible and its Author are two very different things. I know a number of people who are professional students, having studied Greek and Hebrew for years and years without ever accomplishing anything for the Lord. People piously claim to be “students of the Word of God” but you never see them doing anything with what they have learned.

A lot of independent Baptists who used to mock that kind of learning now desire to have the world’s stamp of approval through accreditation of their educational institutions. According to my Bible, we are not to seek the approval of the heathen. I would rather have a man who is barely literate by the world’s standards but has spent a lifetime in the Word, instead of a Ph.D. who doesn’t know God.

Many people come to church just to hear the message but they never apply what they have heard. They want to see and be seen. Hungering and thirsting for the Word is more than just having a Bible in your hand; it means taking the time and effort to read it and find out what God has in its pages for your life.

In this Beatitude, Jesus is not talking about the Pharisees and scribes of the time whose duties included the handling of the Scriptures. He was describing people who worked zealously to learn and apply in their lives the principles found in God’s Word.

I’m afraid that today as a nation we are in the prophetic state of famine with regard to the Bible. There was a time when nearly everyone knew the basic stories and principles of the Bible, but today we are finding in youth rallies and elsewhere across the country that we have a generation that is Biblically illiterate.

We used to have preachers who would open up the Book and proclaim, “Thus saith the Lord.” Now we have those who say that they will use the Bible as a “starting point” for their sermon. I’ve got news for you: I don’t need your psychology or philosophy. Let’s just jump into the Bible and see what God has to say.

God help these preachers who will take a text and spin it any way they want. As a friend of mine in Michigan likes to say, “It’s on the page.” We need more “page” preaching from men of God who just want to know, “What saith the Lord?”

My home church has gone through difficult times just like any other ministry, with burdens and needs of all kinds. My wife and I have tried to counsel and help young people who have made bad choices and found themselves in tough situations. In the midst of a particularly busy period like this, I turned to my wife one night and said, “Valerie, I love the Bible.”

We are living in an especially tumultuous time in this world. People are wrecking their lives at every turn and going down on the rocks of discouragement and despair. Thank God we’ve got a Book that we can turn to with something solid to hold onto when the rest of the world is crashing and burning.

I don’t always like what the Bible says, but oftentimes it will bring the truth right to where I am. I love that the Word of God is always steady and true, never changing on the whim of man’s thought or imagination. Its words promise us that if we stay on the path, we will have success and be able to look at God one day to hear Him say, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

How much do we hunger and thirst after righteousness? It’s what revival is all about – getting back to that first love, and finding out about God through His revealed Word.

Let’s start by looking at a few basic dietary rules concerning hunger and thirst. First of all, eating and drinking are signs of good health. Many people who are not in good health must be force-fed through intravenous devices or other means. When people lose their appetites due to sickness, it often leads to a loss of cognitive reasoning abilities so the prescribed medical treatment often includes special feeding measures.

Cravings correspond to your particular needs. Sometimes you want something salty, and other times you want something sweet. Once my wife woke up in the middle of the night with a craving for a certain brand of salsa and chips, and a few days later we discovered that she was pregnant. A man in my church once went to a bakery on a Sunday morning to buy chocolate-covered donuts with a certain type of sprinkles on them for his pregnant wife. Because her body is changing and a precious baby is inside her, this woman has a desire for specific dietary items.

When you have a craving, you will do whatever is necessary to satisfy it. As we have seen, husbands of pregnant wives are very familiar with this concept.

Another basic dietary rule is that we don’t have to be persuaded to eat. No one has to say to me, “Eat something.” In fact, I need to have more people tell me, “Stop eating.” The very existence of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig and other companies like them is proof that people do not have to be forced to eat. Many of us like it so much that we can’t stop.

Eating and drinking are signs that a person is enjoying life. How do you celebrate a special occasion? You go out to your favorite restaurant. Most ball teams celebrate their victories and reflect upon their defeats the same way – over a burger or a pizza. We feed our discouragement literally, with a pint of ice cream in the evening as we sit in front of the television. When you have an emotional craving, it is often addressed at the dinner table.

Now let’s make a spiritual application to these physical examples. If you crave to read and hear God’s Word, that is a sign of spiritual health. During the month of January, I look forward to our church’s annual February camp meeting the way an addict anticipates his next fix.

When you are spiritual, you will do whatever it takes to satisfy your appetite. You’ll find a way to get to church. No one will have to persuade you to get around the good things of God. My staff and I often spend half of our time during the week following up with our own church members, trying to get them to come to Sunday school. When people are spiritually healthy, that’s not necessary. They don’t sit in a church wondering when the service will be over so they can get to whatever other place they want to go.

If you get bitter over hearing a preacher talk about that or some other truth, and you aren’t enjoying the house of God like you should, it’s not the preacher’s problem. The Holy Spirit is knocking on your heart’s door. It’s a “you” problem if you are not excited about the Word of God, the songs of God, the place of God and the people of God.

There is a process to developing a hunger and thirst for righteousness. When I got right with God, I didn’t immediately start reading my Bible and praying as often as I should. I didn’t always listen to the right things or watch the right things. It doesn’t happen overnight. But by a slow process I got to where I needed to be.

When new believers come to me with their concerns about how hard it is to get close to God and push away from the world, I have one thing to say to them: “Welcome to the Christian life.” Growing closer to Christ will cost you something, mainly the fact that you have to give up your love affair with the world.

It is a molding process. Phil. 3:10 says, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death.” If you are going to conform to something, you will want to be just like it. To be conformed in this verse is to be molded and made like Jesus Christ.

Jesus wants you to be a Christian. That means being Christ-like. You can be born again, bound for Heaven and still not be a Christian. You can be saved and still be backslidden, and even be involved in some of the vilest sin known to man. But when you are saved, God’s plan is for you to begin the process of being molded into His image and becoming more Christ-like. The only way to do that is by knowing who Christ is, and that knowledge is found in the Word of God.

It is a motivating process. The Bible says in I Cor. 10:31, “Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.” Let me ask you a question: If God saved you, why are you not motivated to serve Him? I don’t see how I can rejoice in the cross and not have a desire to be exactly what Christ wants me to be.

How dare you take back the reins of your life after He died on the cross and gave you eternal life. How dare you think that you know better than the God who saved you and that you can make decisions contrary to His Word.

I am motivated because He loves me so much that everything good in my life has come from Him. That makes me want to live for Him.

It is a measuring process. John 14:21 says, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him.” We are to keep His commandments.\

I Pet. 1:15-16 says, “But as he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation; Because it is written, Be ye holy; for I am holy.”

Each of us from time to time thinks, “I am so glad I’m not like So-and-so. I’m a much better Christian than that.” The person you are talking about is probably thinking the same thing about you.

Who are you measuring your Christianity against? The measuring stick you should be using is the Bible. It doesn’t matter how you compare to someone else; what matters is how you stack up in light of the Word and its commandments.

We can always find someone who is worse than we are. Every week I go preach in the federal prison, and I usually leave there thinking, “Thank God that they’re in there and I’m not.” When I start feeling good about myself because I haven’t committed any major felonies, I open the Bible and I’m reminded that it’s not about what they did, but how I am living according to the Word of God.

One day we will all be judged out of that Book, and how we did in comparison to other people will not matter. That’s a good reason to know what is in God’s Word. I find it funny that we have this big test looming and we aren’t taking the time to open the textbook. All of us, whether saved or lost, will stand and give an account of ourselves before God.

If I read my Bible just so I can check off another item on a to-do list, I’m not reading it to be edified or changed. You should analyze what you read so you will know what it says. The Bible has the answer for every question in your life. There is nothing you face for which God does not already have a clear Biblical principle or precept.

I was preaching once to a group of teenagers when a pretty girl came up to me accompanied by a scraggly looking boy. I knew after just looking at him that he needed someone to beat him over the head with a two-by-four.

“Preacher, you said you had an answer from the Bible for everything,” he said. “She wants to know if she should date me.”

I looked him right in the eye and said, “Are you saved? Have you been born again?”

“Yes,” he said with a more serious tone in his voice than before.

“Have you been scripturally baptized by immersion?”

“No.”

“Then she should not date you because you’re a disobedient Christian. If you’ll disobey in baptism, you’ll disobey in other things.”

It’s not rocket science, folks. Just look at what the Bible has to say. “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (II Cor. 6:14).

The Bible says in II Tim. 3:16, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.” It may not have been written directly to me, but all of it was written for me. It was written for the Jew in the first century and for me in the 21^st century.

Analyze what you read in the Bible. If you don’t know what a word means, get a dictionary and find out. Once you analyze it, memorize it. Ps. 119:11 says, “Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not sin against thee.”

Sometimes I want to do something wrong, and then the Bible tells me, “Oh, no you don’t.” That’s because of the Word in my heart, way down deep, going all the way back to my childhood.

Familiarize yourself with what the Bible says. Meditate on it. As a dog chews on a bone, keep it in front of you all the time. My father-in-law’s life verse is Ps. 19:14, which says, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight, O LORD, my strength, and my redeemer.” Get yourself a verse that you can hold onto and point to as your focus, and let the Word of God be fresh with you every day.

When I got right with God, I moved in with my father and stepmother. She would have sticky notes all over the house with Bible verses on them, so you would be reading the Bible no matter what else you were doing in the house. She was helping me familiarize myself with the Word of God, which Prov. 12:26 says is the path of righteousness which is the “more excellent” way.

As you study the Bible, you need to personalize it and see how it will affect your life. Some people think it was just written by a bunch of old men centuries ago, but it can help you live differently today than you did yesterday. The people today who talk about “relevant Bible teaching” need to realize that the Word has always been relevant and it will still be relevant long after they are gone.

There has never been anything wrong with the Bible. The problem is that every generation has wanted to ignore what it has to say. If it says that I should “flee youthful lusts” (II Tim. 2:22) and “abstain from all appearance of evil” (I Thess. 5:22), then I need to put some things in place in my life that will help me do that. Too many people just talk about how pretty it sounds when they read it and don’t want to put it into practice as they live.

None of us can ever believe that we have arrived in the Christian life, but if we hunger and thirst after righteousness we are going in the right direction. That direction is reflected in our actions.

First, we confess our sin. The Bible says in I John 1:8-10, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

I worry about people who never come to the altar. You can’t be around good Bible preaching more than a few times before you find something you need some help with. After you go too long without making a decision you just become rebellious.

I do everything I can to stay right with God, but every morning I realize that there are some deep waters I have to pass through. When you get in the Word you will find God working in your heart, and you’ll discover some things that you should not be saying or doing. The closer you get to God, the more you realize that there is some baggage you should be leaving behind, especially when the Holy Spirit shines that giant spotlight on you.

Do you wonder why we don’t have revival? One answer is found in Ps. 66:18. “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” That’s what happens when God shows you something in your life that you need to change, but you refuse because you don’t want to give up your favorite sin. That’s what keeps revival from happening.

Many of us know II Chronicles 7:14, but we need to read it with the preceding verse for proper context. “If I shut up heaven that there be no rain, or if I command the locusts to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among my people; If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”

When you hunger and thirst after righteousness, your affections will change. Col. 3:2 says, “Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth.”

I John 2:15-17 says, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.”

If this world still tugs on you too much, you’re tied to it too much. You need to release it. There is no bigger sports junkie than me, but it doesn’t have a hold over me because it passes away. I don’t ever wonder whether to be in the house of God when something big in the sports world is going on.

I have no desire to be around a crowd of people drinking and carousing. If you do it, I hope the Holy Spirit breaks your heart and makes you think about that blood dripping off the cross and what put Jesus Christ there. I’ll just be having a good time in church, and the next morning when I wake up I won’t be wondering who I am, where I am or who I was with.

To help you change your affections you will need some unction from the Holy One as described in I John 2:12. That will help you when you’re tempted to do something you shouldn’t do and no one is around to tell you not to. When the world tries to pull you one way, the unction from the Holy One pulls you the other way. This is where we see who can get victory over temptation and who cannot. If the Holy Spirit is not real and evident in your life, you cannot live the Christian life.  Having a hunger and thirst for righteousness will result in a demonstration of God’s presence and power.

When I die, I don’t want to have lived in vain without investing my life in someone. The kind of car you drive or the house you live in will not matter in 100 years. What will matter is who you invest yourself in. If I remain faithful with God’s help, one day there will be younger people who I led to Christ that are continuing to live for Him and see souls saved long after I’m gone.

The promise for the believer in this Beatitude is found in the second half of the verse: “for they shall be filled.” That means they will be satisfied. You know the feeling when you’ve eaten just enough that you don’t feel stuffed but you still feel good. That’s one way to feel satisfied.

As for me, I’m satisfied with Jesus. He has never done me wrong. I could give you dozens of examples of people whose lives were turned around by Him and now they are extremely satisfied with what He has done for them.

You can have the world; I’ll take Jesus. I can take you to the graves of young people who thought they could be happy with what the world had to offer, but they took their own lives because it wasn’t enough. They left grieving families behind because they thought there was nothing left to live for.

When you chase after that kind of life, you’ll sell all you have to get it and then find out that it’s worthless. By the grace of God, I can also introduce you to some people who will tell you, “I’ve done everything the world had to offer, and it left me with nothing. But I’ve got Jesus and I’m satisfied now.”

I’ve been down that path as well, but I’m satisfied now. I’m full and blessed beyond measure.

I don’t want to go back. I want to keep going forward.

I’m satisfied.