2/22/2017 1 Comment The Year of TruthI am both saddened and hopeful as I write this blog. Day after day I watch the news and find myself wondering, when did we cross a line? When did we decide that we were no longer a lawful society? But the question that plagues me most is when did Christians become so lawless? For decades now, we have been engaged in a literal war. I still remember the battle for our public schools when Christ was removed and the religion of Humanism replaced God’s moral law. As in that era, there is a strategy behind actors speaking out, television shows pushing moral limits, movies overstepping boundaries, one-sided news reports, and parsed political words. Satan’s strategy is the lawless takeover of America by removing the boundary of truth. Don’t be mistaken. This is not a battle of ideology, where one man’s political beliefs should be debated against another’s. This is a battle to wipe out the testimony of the goodness of God that this nation represents every day we prosper. Because He was the foundation on which we were established, we have been a beacon of light to a dark world. We are in a war against truth, yet we consume carnal knowledge like starving children. Ironically, it isn’t the debauchery and depravity that is destroying us, but the carnal philosophy of elitism that is behind iniquity. This same mindset was popular in Europe before WWII when the privileged and influential favored Hitler and his trendy propaganda. The exclusive ideology of selectivity was involved in Margaret Sanger’s Population Control advocacy and led to the ultimate founding of Planned Parenthood. But note how quickly this same way of thinking has become fashionable in our nation. We look down on anyone who doesn’t see the world the way we do. They are lesser than us. We demand our own way. What was old is new again and through these same discriminatory beliefs Hitler instigated the instability that led to the inevitability of war. Because we have all sinned. Because evil still rules in the hearts of men, every government of every nation is constantly subjected to the corrosive power of sin. This is the 2nd law of thermodynamics, which is also called the “Law of Decay.” “The most probable state for any natural system is one of disorder. All natural systems degenerate when left to themselves*” In spiritual terms, without the influence of the One and only source of truth, governments will descend into the throes of anarchy and godlessness. The irony is that lawlessness requires a weakened church and compromised Christianity. When the church is neither salt nor light, the banner of truth will be trampled underfoot. For the very first time in our history, we are seeing Christian persecution on American soil. Government has begun to dictate what we preach, how we operate our businesses, and what we say to one another. I believe that we can trace our decent into decay back to January 22, 1973. The day we allowed judicial activism to go unanswered. The day that the shedding of innocent blood began to seep into the soil of our beloved country. Under our most recent president, there was tremendous concern in the hearts of many believers. Yet, there were no riots, no death threats, no panicked mobs running through the streets and no property being destroyed. What we did was pray and spiritual forces turned their focus to the threat they saw in our prayers. Prayer threatened the godless agenda of a decaying society. Prayer threatened the spirits who wanted to turn the light out in the last nation to stand for truth. To say our society is not in the process of decay means closing our eyes to the recent resurgence of lawlessness. Prejudice and bigotry, racism and reverse racism, dead police officers and radical extremists have increased while our leaders play the fiddle. We are reaping more than 40 years of silenced truth. Maybe, that is why, on the eve of New Year’s Eve, in the middle of the night, I awakened to the sound of the Lord’s voice saying, “Ask Me what I am going to do in 2017.” Barely had I roused myself to ask the question when the answer came, “Truth.” It was one word, but it resounded with all the authority of heaven. 2017 will be a year of truth. When truth arises, as from the cobwebs of a still tomb, it has the final say, but what form it takes is entirely up to God. He uses the strangest things to change the atmosphere. Truth will not speak without a listener. When no one hears, truth grows quiet, slipping into a void where it silently observes our decay. For decades now, truth has fallen on deaf ears. It has spent countless years caught in the noisy cacophony of opinions and godless philosophies. Contrary to our behavior, truth does not attempt to defend itself and yet... Every now and then, truth stands up and when it does, the lies we have believed vanish before it. Truth arose in 1861 when slave states attempted to secede the union so they could chain their brothers. Though Truth had been silent, when it finally spoke, slavery ended. Truth arose in the 1960’s when one man’s voice was lifted above the noise of bigotry and truth exposed the injustice of discrimination and the oppression of elitist ideology. Truth arose in WWII when the inhumanity of man to man was exposed and we swore it would never happen again. But it did. In the holocaust that began in 1973, we showed how quickly we could forget and condemn innocent, human life to torment, suffering and death. Truth can be silent for impossible lengths of time, but it will not remain voiceless. When truth arises, demons become reckless. They know their power is about to be revoked. Their time is limited, for even Satan knows that truth, presented in Love, is irreversible. But have we grown comfortable with lies? Do we recognize the sound of truth? Jeremiah 9:5, “Friend deceives friend, and no one speaks the truth. They have taught their tongues to lie; they weary themselves with sinning.” Psalm 52:3, “You love evil more than good, falsehood more than speaking what is right.” We like our sermons to tickle our ears and our politicians to make us comfortable, even while the law of decay accelerates around us. We will only recognize the truth if we realize that any agenda that must manipulate or lie against the truth to be accepted is a lie. And lies can only lead us to destruction. Truth is rising and I see God exposing the dishonest communication we have allowed to enter our political discourse, even while He also reveals our own unrighteous attitudes of dishonor against authority. As ministers and teachers, my parents taught me that following Christ meant a complete change of mind. I was not my own. I had been bought by the blood of Jesus. That meant I had no voice in deciding what was right or wrong; moral or immoral. I was not the Lawgiver. God, the source of all truth, had already determined those things. They taught me to respect the importance and power of the law, showing me how the very foundation of our nation rested on the words of God. Only by the preservation of these commandments could we be blessed. They taught me how even our planet rotates on its axis by God’s authority. Truth in action. Were this planet to decide to ignore that law and spin even a fraction of a millimeter off course, we would die. How grateful we are that the stars and the universe obey Him. They taught me that within God’s Law there is safety and protection; families flourish and the nations of the earth can come to know the One Who holds the whole world in His hands. Under God’s Law, even a sinner is free to sin. This choice may be grievous, but unless our sin presumes to imposes itself on the health and welfare of others, we are free to choose and to experience the consequences of our choice for good or for evil. They also taught me that it is possible for men to create laws that oppose God’s Law and when they do, we have a responsibility to resist in a spirit of honor and respect. God has given us a way to dispute unrighteous laws, but His way of protesting involves laying down our own lives, not demanding that others lose theirs. My grief today involves believers who applaud lawlessness and breathe insults and curses against the leaders of this nation. If enforcing the law imposes hardship, these people respond by placing their own comfort and convenience above others. With vitriol and anarchy, they oppose the laws they do not like and use God’s name to justify their actions, but they are doing the very opposite of what Christ would do. While my parents taught me to honor the law, they also taught me that if I believed a law was unrighteous, I must be willing to pay the cost in the same way Christ paid the cost for me. In other words, even in a matter of conscience, I must recognize the right of the law to exist. If I choose to resist an immoral law, I must lay my own life down without judgment against those who follow it. Only then can I be used as an instrument of righteousness and change. Which is exactly what I did when I stood in front of a clinic to protest the unjust law of abortion. I considered the owners, managers, and helpers as precious as the lives of unborn children. For that reason, God turned my hardships into something beautiful. I counted the cost. I went to jail so that an immoral law could be changed. Remember the church of Laodicea in the book of Revelation? We remember it as the church that gave God a sick stomach because they no longer loved the truth. The word, Laodicea, means, “People’s Rights.” These Christians were consumed with their own comfort, their own wealth and their own rights. Are we Laodicea? As in abortion, we want the freedom to sin without consequences, but there will always be consequences for sin. If we abandon the word of God under the pressure of political correctness, then what will happen when eternity asks if we loved the truth? If God is not the author and finisher of all truth, then whose truth do we base our laws on? The very reason our nation once stood as a beacon among nations, was because the source and foundation of our laws was the person of Truth, Jesus Christ, Himself. Isaiah 28:16, Therefore thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold, I am laying in Zion a stone, a tested stone, A costly cornerstone for the foundation, firmly placed. He who believes in it will not be disturbed. As the spoken Word of God, our forefather’s wisely saw that He, alone, had the wisdom to lead a nation. I Corinthians 3:11, “For no man can lay a foundation other than the one which is laid, which is Jesus Christ.” For the first time since our founding, truth is being rejected as our source and we are facing the law of decay. Proverbs 22:28, “Do not move the ancient boundary which your fathers have set.” Though truth has remained silent, God has allowed the tension of our questioning to build. We have chipped away at the boundaries of our own protection and have arrived at this brink. Psalm 82:5, They do not know nor do they understand; They walk about in darkness; All the foundations of the earth are shaken. The greatest warning my parents ever gave me was that my Love for Christ had to be real enough to withstand the possibility of dying for His sake. If I ever renounced Him to save my own life, I would lose it. I took that to heart. Today, we are watching Christian leaders sell their soul for crowds and political correctness. We are seeing everyday believers demand comfort and convenience at the cost of others. Words are being twisted. Slander is being applauded. Spreading lies and fomenting division has become the new norm. Lawlessness is filling our nation, but truth is rising. When truth arises, we will be exposed. We will not only see the state of our nation, but the compromise in our own soul will be unmasked. When truth arises, we will have the opportunity, once again, to repent for our sins. To humble ourselves and pray. When truth arises, we will have yet one more chance to seek God’s face and turn from our wicked ways. We are standing at a crossroad. The signposts read: Life or death. Truth or deceit. Revival or decay. Nevertheless, we have never been in a better place to see the glory of God cover us. And so, it is with great hope and anticipation that I say, Let Truth arise in 2017. Let the enemies of Truth be revealed. And let Truth shine its light upon us, one more time. *Lord Kelvin as quoted in A.W. Smith and J.N. Cooper, Elements of Physics, 8th edition (New York, New York: McGraw-Hill Publishing, 1972), p. 241. www.christiananswers.net
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It was December of 1989. After several setbacks, the Christmas play I had written and directed for the young people at church had gone off without a hitch. I turned my mind to the next day. I was headed to court, along with a host of others, to be sentenced for rescuing unborn children a year earlier.
My call to take up the cry of the persecuted unborn had been a supernatural one. It had come as a visitation from God in the privacy of my own home some six years earlier. After stepping out in obedience to raise awareness and awaken the church to the plight of the least of these among us, He told me it was time to pay the ultimate price and put my faith into action. I had grown up serving Christ. By that I mean that I had grown up in an unusual family. Dad was a pastor and mom a singer and my earliest memories are filled with the evidence of their love for the homeless, the drug addicts and the alcoholics in our city. I remember waking up to strangers on our couch more than once. They were people of action and ministry was their passion, but I was simply following their lead. The supernatural call to follow His voice came at a time when my very concept of Christianity was under transformation. Though I had grown up in the church, I had finally encountered the One I had been worshipping for so long. I was no longer blindly following a denomination’s rules or a man’s eloquent interpretation of scripture. Like the wise men of old, I was following the Star. Though I lived in Houston, I joined some 200 individual’s I had never met in Austin, Texas and stood in the doorway of an abortion clinic while cold rain fell around us. From 7:30 in the morning until just after 4:00pm, I watched disgruntled officers carry the others off one by one. I was the next to the last person arrested and by the time we left our post, clinic hours were over. No babies were killed. Several women who had made lethal appointments for that day ended up following our counselors to a safe and warm place where, for the first time, they heard that there was an alternative to their dilemma. Some “chose” life. Though our marriage had been filled with financial struggle, the year after my rescue was unprecedented. My husband lost the company he had passionately created from the visions in his entrepreneurial spirit. Our cars were repossessed. We were evicted from our apartment and wearily moved into my sister’s trailer. Day after day, Johnnie struggled to find work. It was the most difficult year. As Christmas approached, we knew we needed a miracle. At least twice in our journey, we had experienced “dollar store” Christmas’s in which the only presents under the tree were a couple of dollar store packages for each child. I hated those seasons, but the kids cheerfully told me that these were their favorite. I still believe they were trying to soften the sadness in me, although there is no doubt that those days drew us closer together and taught us all about the true meaning of Love. But this Christmas there would be no dollar store presents and no special food on the table. Our “tree” was the dying Schefflera plant my husband had rescued from his office. We draped a string of lights around the bare branches and called it our “Charlie Brown” tree. The worst of it, however, was the $495.00 deposit the Light Company wanted and the anticipation that our power would be cut off the day after Christmas. Two days before the Christmas play, our 7-year-old daughter had slipped off a bench during one of our long rehearsals and had to have stitches sewn in the gash on her head. A friend couldn’t bear the thought that I would be leaving my family during such troubled times and she generously begged me to let her pay the fine. The courts had offered the large group of rescuers a 6-month probation for pleading “No Contest” to the charges. At the end of that time, they would strike the “crime” from our record and it would be as though we had never committed the trespass. The last thing that Travis County wanted was to see their system clogged with so many people, but they also wanted to make a statement that would discourage others from following in our footsteps. Both my husband and I felt strongly that if God had called me to go, then my obedience wasn’t finished until I had faced the consequences. However, the mother in me was having a very hard time leaving my children in such circumstances. Johnnie promised that our daughter and her stitches were in good hands and I prayed diligently to know what decision to make. God had been good to us so many times, but as Christmas neared, I could see no way for this holiday season to turn out well. Not only that, but my youngest son, Phillip, would have a birthday while I was in jail. That felt like the last straw. How could I be away from him on that day?! I felt myself caving in to the desire to accept the offer and make this problem go away. That’s when Phillip approached me with a question. I called him our “Norman Rockwell” child. He was my freckle-faced little trouble maker dashing away from the swimming hole with the “No Swimming” sign behind him. This would be his 9th birthday. Looking up at me with his big, Irish-green eyes, he asked, “Mom, if you go to jail, do you think that anyone will get saved?” “I don’t know, Phil,” I answered, surprised by the depth of the question. “I only know that I will tell them about Jesus.” “Then I can’t think of a better Christmas or birthday present than knowing somebody accepted Jesus as their Savior,” he responded. “If you don’t go to jail, mom, then we won’t have any presents at all!” And so, it was that I spent my 39th birthday in a holding tank in Travis County Correctional Complex. It was one of the longest days of my life. The women around me were coming down from variously induced highs. For hours, I was the only one awake. The girls would sleep and occasionally one would rouse and let out a string of expletives. The room reeked of sweat, urine and alcohol all mixed together. I fought the deepest emotional depression I had ever experienced. I thought they had locked us in and forgotten us. We weren’t served anything to eat or drink the entire day. I was thirsty, hungry, missing my family and wondering why God had abandoned me. Late that evening, we were transferred to a tank in the general population. This was a large dormitory like room surrounded by individual cells and containing a sizeable dayroom in the center complete with couches and television. Showers and toilets were at the end of the long room, but there was no real privacy, even there. There were two people to a cell and our tank held somewhere around 30 women in all. Every night the doors to both the cells and the tank were locked. Around 6:00 the next morning, the doors were unlocked and the women would meander around the dayroom with loud, raucous language creating an ambiance that charged the atmosphere with the electricity of impending hostility. There were 4 other rescuers inside when I arrived. I was so thankful to see them. Some of the 200 had taken the plea deal, but most had chosen to serve their time after the holiday season. I found the way the judicial system treated us to be ironical. Our case was not typical and the Travis County judges seemed to understand that, but in an unprecedented action, each person was given the opportunity to decide when they would serve their time. At least one individual chose the following summer and turned himself in months after the fact, but the great bulk of rescuers chose to come in January, after spending Christmas with their families. My family and I had decided that I had nothing to lose and as Phil so eloquently put into words, we might just have the best Christmas ever if someone came to know the Lord. The first few days inside were an adjustment and I was blessed to have another rescuer as my cell mate, but three days into my sentence, she was released. I enjoyed being alone in my cell for a couple of days before I was told that my new roommate was on the way. She was younger than me and physically strong. She already had a reputation in the system and the tank buzzed with talk. She had assaulted another woman with a knife, which put her in the hospital. We were never told the status of the other woman’s condition, but my new roommate had a serious injury on her knee with numerous stitches from the attack. The other prisoners looked at me with sympathy and I thought, “Really, God? I obey You and this is what You give me in return?” Knowing that perfect Love casts out fear, I asked Him to give me a love for her before she arrived. I prayed over the bunk bed we would be sharing. I had already chosen the top bunk as I figured she would not want to climb into bed with a wounded knee. I walked around the small room praying God’s angels and His peace would abide in that space. I had always been careful about the atmosphere of my home. No matter where we lived, worship music set the mood of our house, but this was a different place altogether. There were several other “tanks” in the complex and each day the tank with the fewest marks won the ability to watch a current movie in the evening. I dreaded these nights with a passion. The swearing and cursing that normally filled the air was only magnified by these shows. During my stay, most of the films were filled with macabre murders and gross violence. Though I lay in my bed and tried to close my ears to the sounds, there was no shutting it out. I marveled at why we would assume anyone would be less troubled after a stay in prison. My cellmate arrived and I could see that she was as surprised by my presence as I was by hers. It was clear that we had nothing in common, but I refused to see her through eyes of good and evil. I waited for an opportunity to be Christ to her. There had already been many of those occasions. The 3 rescuers who remained inside with me, had begun to meet regularly in a corner of the dayroom. We would invite the other girls to join us where we would talk about the Lord and pray with one another. There were a couple of girls from my first day in the holding tank who sometimes joined us. One was a young Korean mother who had been arrested for prostitution. She told me that her two children were in a motel, alone, waiting for her to return. She was proud of being able to afford a motel because it was better than the car they had lived out of before she began to make money on the streets. She cried every day. One day, the authorities came to take her back to her own country. I never knew what happened to her or her children after that. The other woman was probably in her late 20’s, but clearly had already lived a hard life. She had been with me from the beginning. The first night, when I turned myself in, she was already in the cell they took me to. She wasn’t very talkative and her troubled spirit filled the tiny room with bitterness. That was the longest night of my life, listening to the sound of demons shrieking; strange noises echoing through the corridors of the county jail. Some were screaming to be let out, but I was most taken by the lust-filled cat-calls and propositions of the spirits of perversion that coaxed and seduced souls they would never see through thick, black walls. “Hell must sound something like this,” I thought. My new cellmate never joined us for prayer, but one day I noticed her limping and rubbing the long incision that began several inches above her knee and plunged just as deeply below. She had a metal brace around her leg to keep her from opening the stitches that held the wound together. I recognized my moment. “May I pray for your knee?” I asked her. “God really does Love you and He cares that you are in pain.” To my amazement, she said, “Yes.” I laid my hands on her knee and asked Jesus to take her pain, just as He did at Calvary. It seems she said it felt better, but I don’t remember for sure. What I do remember was the softness that came over her countenance afterward. She was just another hurting human that had no idea her life mattered to anyone, especially to God. There is no way to share all the stories that unfolded over the two and a half weeks I was there, but I do want to reveal some highlights. The first one came on Phil’s birthday. Every day, I would call my friend who was watching him and Nathan, his older brother. Nathan was always waiting to talk to me, but Phil was out having a good time. I considered it a successful day if he at least stopped by the phone long enough to say, “Hi mom!” and then ran back out to play. On this day, however, things were different. “Thank God you called!” my friend exclaimed. “I’ve been so worried about Phil. We gave him your gift and planned a birthday party for him, but we can’t get him to cheer up! He’s been crying the whole day.” She put him on the phone. There was an odd silence as he tried to speak; broken by the sound of sobs. “Mom?” he finally managed to get his words out, “Has anybody been saved, yet?” I felt as though someone had stabbed a sword right through my heart. It was all I could do to keep my voice from trembling. I told him about the Korean girl who had asked Jesus into her heart as we sat in the holding tank. She was the first one to sober up enough to talk to me. I saw her crying and asked if I could put my arms around her. She poured out her story and I told her of Jesus and how much He Loved her. I told her how He had come to die just for people like us. I told her we were all lost, all broken, and all stubborn, but He was willing to forgive everything we had ever done if only we would ask. That seemed to comfort Phil. “Thanks mom,” he said. “I really miss you.” I turned away from the phone and tried to get back to my cell before the tears exploded down my cheeks. I lay my head on the small desk in the room as my own sobs released the torrent inside. Suddenly, I became aware of a presence and wiped my eyes. One of the most frequently enforced rules was that we could not enter any cell other than our own, but here she stood just inside the doorway. The hard, angry girl who had been with me from the beginning had followed me from the phone back to my room. “What’s wrong?” she asked, and it was clear she was concerned. I told her the story of my son. How I hated leaving him on his birthday. How he had said that it would be worth it if only one person came to know Christ. Tears began to slide down her face as she said, “Please tell your son, ‘Thank you’ for me. From the moment I met you in the county jail, I knew that God had sent you. That’s why I’ve been so afraid to talk to you. When you started telling me about Jesus, I realized that no matter what I did or how far I ran, I could never get away from my grandmother’s prayers and when I get out, I’m going back to her and back to church. Please tell your son that you came here just for me.” I learned so much in jail. Even today, I am changed because of it. As I have said, I found the language to be the most shocking and uncomfortable part of the atmosphere. If your eyes were closed, you could not tell the difference in whether a guard or an inmate was speaking. We are all lost… I had never been around such words and now I was assaulted by their toxins. It felt like fists hitting my spirit. Several days had passed when I awoke one morning to the sound of an inmate cursing loudly. Her voice echoed throughout the tank with the contaminating force of venom, but it was met by a voice from the other side of the room as another inmate yelled, “Shut your ____ ____ mouth! Don’t you have any respect? These women don’t belong here! They came because they care about us and the least you can do is watch your language!” It was only then that I realized how significantly the sound of swearing had diminished… and I marveled. There were only 4 rescuers left in the tank, including me, and yet, salt had savored the atmosphere. Light had penetrated the darkness. My last day there was no different. I remember my very first meal, when I sat down to eat. I bowed my head to pray in the boisterous, raucous cafeteria. The girls at my table laughed nervously and made a few jokes. But on my final day, as I sat to eat for the last time, one of the girls asked if she could pray. “Of course,” I responded. It was then that I looked around the room and noted that, whether a rescuer was present or not, every girl at every table was bowing their head to pray for their meal. One of the saddest testimonies to come out of this experience happened several weeks later. One of the inmates called another rescuer who lived in Austin and had given her number out so that the girls could stay in touch. “Mary?” she asked, “Why are these Christians so different from y’all?” “What do you mean?” Mary asked. “They aren’t like you guys,” she answered. “A big group of Christians came in together and we were excited! But they don’t talk to the rest of us like you did. They keep to themselves. They act like they’re too good for us.” I thought about salt. If it stays in the shaker, it can’t savor anything and I grieved. Why is it so easy to follow our theology instead of following the Star? If the lives of unborn children were precious to God, then how much more the lives of these women? I wish I had time to tell you about the guard who worked a Christmas miracle to get me out in half the time. My sentence was for 60 days, but when she saw my husband and children visit me on the weekend, she determined that I would be home for Christmas. I wish I could tell you about the guards that huddled in a small, drafty, one-room building, freezing from the frigid temperatures outside, while I pulled a picture of Baby Choice out of my sock and showed them what abortion really was. No one disciplined me for the contraband. Those weeks were possibly the fullest I have ever lived. I had nothing to lose. But I realize this blog is long, so I will not tell you everything. I felt the Lord wanted me to share some highlights because, when we follow the Star, we will always find Christmas. The day I was set to leave, the other girls went to bed and I sat in the dayroom alone. It was the policy of the system that an inmate could leave at midnight if they so desired, on the day of their release. Johnnie was waiting and I was anxious to get home. Somehow, they had allowed me to take my Bible and my devotional book in with me and as I sat, I read my devotion for the day I was to be released. It said, “To him will I give the land that he hath trodden upon, and to his children, because he hath wholly followed the Lord,” Deuteronomy 1:36. I knew my Daddy’s voice when I heard it. He was telling me that He was well-pleased. We drove the three hours back to Houston on icy roads just ahead of an arctic front. Somewhere around 5:00 in the morning, we fell asleep in our bed in our warm trailer that was only a few days away from losing electricity. When we got up the next morning, the city was blanketed in snow. Unusual for Houston. It was my first gift from my Father. We picked up our 4 children, who had been divided up to be watched over by dear friends and stopped by to see others who had asked us to pay them a visit. When we arrived back home, our van was loaded with Christmas packages and food. Christmas morning, I watched as my 4 children tore open 11 presents each. Exactly. And I marveled that these gifts had come from different sources. Some were for the girls. Some for the boys. But every child had the exact same number to open. There were even gifts for Johnnie and me. As I sat amid ripped paper and empty boxes, the smell of Christmas turkey baking in the oven, a spiral cut smoked ham freshly thawed in the fridge and numerous pies and cookies on the table, I could only wonder at the goodness of God. Had I stayed home; had I taken the plea bargain, how differently this day would have turned out… It was Christmas Day and the Giver was unwrapping the Gift of His Love. It was in the middle of these very thoughts, that we heard a strange noise in the trailer park. The children ran out to see what it was and came bursting back inside. “Mom!” one of them said breathlessly, “There’s some people in an RV that said they’re looking for a woman named Cathey!” I went to the door. The older couple refused to come inside, but handed me a card. “We have to hurry,” they said. “We are on our way to see our daughter in the Travis County Correctional Complex in Austin, but she has told us all about you. We just wanted to thank you for what you did.” Inside the card was a check for $500.00 and a note scribbled across the bottom that read, “My God shall supply all my needs according to His riches in glory.” The next morning, Johnnie paid our outstanding deposit, with $5.00 left over. When you follow the Star, you will always find Christmas. The thought that inspired the telling of this story this morning, was the wise men who brought gifts to Jesus at His birth. They were elaborate. Gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Priceless offerings laid before a stranger. I thought about what price, not only in the gifts they brought, but in the cost to their own lives. I thought about how they defied Herod’s command to report back when they found what they were searching for. Though it meant disobeying a king and brought certain danger to their lives, the wise men followed the Star of Bethlehem and it led them to Christmas. And I realized that sometimes, encountering the Christ of Christmas requires disobeying a king. I was once a blind follower of religion. I didn’t know that I was created to hear my Father’s voice. Truth is, like the wise men, we are all called to follow the Star, but it’s easier to follow a king. There are many kings. Our spouse can be a king, or even our children. Our king can be political ideology, opinions, or even our creed. Sometimes our king is our favorite theology or our job and sometimes it is a man: beautiful, charismatic and precious to God, but flawed and earthy in origin. Unless we follow the One, the Only, Star of Bethlehem, we will never truly find Christmas. Amid the sweet aroma of freshly baked pies and homemade candy, amongst the ripped holiday paper and empty boxes that litter our floor and under the bright lights and shining ornaments that adorn our tree this year, if we are not careful, we will miss the most important Gift of the season. The Child we celebrate, the Babe who was born in a manger, came to show us the way back to our Creator, our Father, who Loves us so much that He gave His One and only Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish. Though multitudes were alive when Christ was born, only a small handful of believers witnessed the miracle that took place on that auspicious day because they followed the Star. And the same is true still today… Only those who follow Him will find the Gift of Christmas. 11/7/2016 0 Comments What Is...Is.Some 13 or 14 years ago now, I was sleeping soundly, when I suddenly heard these words echo through my spirit with the resounding authority that only God can speak, “What is… is.” They came out of the blue. I hadn’t gone to bed with deep thoughts on my mind. The voice was just there. The words hanging in the air with resonating force. Nothing else. I knew… God wanted me to write. The president who originally brought the word is into question was Bill Clinton. He was in a tight spot. Caught. His sin was laid bare before the world. Impeachment loomed. How would he answer the question? More importantly, how could he lie under oath without having to face the consequences for breaking the law? Today, as I thought on this election, I realized that God was saying far more than I knew that day. He was telling me that the problem ran deeper than a presidential faux pas. Bill was only a reflection of what was happening in our nation. We were falling under the grey dome of deception. Truth was under attack. Our own president was playing fast and loose with the truth and now, decades later, we can clearly observe the division, the dishonesty, and the devastation deception has produced. What is, no longer is in our nation. Rather, what we want is to be has become law. The greatest power of deception is in its ability to deceive… until it’s too late. “There is no there, there…” We have come to a strange time in which words, rhetoric, and political correctness are being set into law. Facts no longer line up with Truth, which means that facts can be whatever we want them to be. Just check out the competing “fact-checking” sites we have available to us, today. A liberal fact can be different than a conservative fact because we have learned the power of rhetoric. We have learned to question what is… The foundation has been eroded. The landmark has been moved. Facts are no longer anchored by the Truth. Believing in words without the power of Truth behind them is like printing money without an equivalent of gold reserves to back it up. Words, like paper money, keep us happy… until the consequences come due. Until inflation erodes the value of the money in your bank account and the cost of living becomes too expensive to bear. Until it gets personal. Until what is catches up with what was never true to begin with. We can believe whatever we want to believe, but we cannot control the consequences of believing what we want to believe. Truth matters. What is… is. Who deceived us into believing that is was open to interpretation? Consider some observations about is: “Forever O Lord, Your Word is settled in heaven,” Psalm 119:89. Until Christ returns, the earth is going to rotate on its axis. The sun is going to rise and after that the sun is going to set. Rain is going to come… Winter is going to follow Fall… Summer is going to follow Spring. Because the God Who Is, said so. Whether we like it or not, we cannot change is. The person who runs a stop sign is endangering lives. Lying is wrong. Racism is wicked. Unforgiveness is toxic. Abortion is murder. Homosexuality is sin. Sexual immorality is devastating. No matter how much we may disagree, we cannot change is. “Every word of God is tried and purified… Add not to His words lest He reprove you and you be found a liar,” Proverbs 30:5&6. God is the landmark. The foundation for all Truth. The basis for all that is. “I am the LORD, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed,” Malachi 3:6. “Your Word is Truth,” John 17:17. No matter how loud we yell, how intimidating we may act, how convincingly we tell a lie, or what laws we pass, we cannot change is. But that’s not to say that no human being has ever changed is. “Then Joshua spoke to the Lord on the day when the Lord gave the Amorites over to the Israelites, and he said in the sight of Israel, ‘Sun, be silent and stand still at Gibeon, and you moon, in the Valley of Ajalon!’ And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the nation took vengeance upon their enemies… There was no day like it before or since, when the Lord heeded the voice of a man,” Joshua 10:12-14. Joshua… son of Nun… changed is. Joshua changed is because he understood what is… is. “Moses My servant is dead… Be not afraid, neither be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go,” Joshua 1:2&9. The nation was in crisis and “Joshua rose,” Joshua 3:1. Joshua changed is because he cared more about the world his children would grow up in than his own comfort. “A long time after that, when the Lord had given Israel rest from all her enemies round about, and Joshua had grown old and advanced in years, he called together all the elders, leaders, judges and officers of Israel… and said…it is the Lord your God Who has fought for you,” Joshua 23:3. Our nation is in crisis… We need men and women who know what is… is. “…and day and night they never stop saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty Who was and Who is and Who is to come,” Revelation 4:8. God… God of Joshua… son of Nun… who changed is… The God Who was and Who is and Who is to come can still change is. “For the Word that God speaks is alive and full of power…” Hebrews 4:12. What a tiny word ‘is’ is, but it can change everything. What we believe about is will determine our future. In a perilous time, rife with spiritual contempt, persuasive lies, persistent fraud, and political anarchy, in a period in which God is mocked, truth is ridiculed, duplicity is revered, and treachery is worshiped, in an age in which ‘is’ is questioned and ambiguity is esteemed, in all of this God remains... Today, our nation is in crisis. Our Moses is dead. And the call for a Joshua goes forth. May it be said that, “Those who Know God, rose to the occasion.” Stand for truth. Pray for peace. Vote for righteousness. And remind the world that ‘is’ never changes. God is. |