Vision

I listened in on this morning’s message at Ephrata Christian Fellowship. Mose Stoltzfus used the following example to show how we as Christians can live at times if we do not accept the all sufficiency of Christ for our lives.

Homer and Langley Collyer were sons of a respected New York doctor. Both had earned college degrees. In fact, Homer had studied at Columbia University to become an attorney. When old Dr. Collyer died in the early part of this century, his sons inherited the family home and estate. The two men—both bachelors—were now financially secure. But the Collyer brothers chose a peculiar lifestyle not at all consistent with the material status their inheritance gave them. They lived in almost total seclusion. They boarded up the windows of their house and padlocked the doors. All their utilities—including water—were shut off. No one was ever seen coming or going from the house. From the outside it appeared empty. Though the Collyer family had been quite prominent, almost no one in New York society remembered Homer and Langley Collyer by the time World War II ended. On March 21, 1947, police received an anonymous telephone tip that a man had died inside the boarded-up house. Unable to force their way in through the front door, they entered the house through a second-story window. Inside they found Homer Collyer’s corpse on a bed. He had died clutching the February 22, 1920 issue of the Jewish Morning Journal, though he had been totally blind for years. This macabre scene was set against an equally grotesque backdrop. It seems the brothers were collectors. They collected everything—especially junk. Their house was crammed full of broken machinery, auto parts, boxes, appliances, folding chairs, musical instruments, rags, assorted odds and ends, and bundles of old newspapers. Virtually all of it was worthless. An enormous mountain of debris blocked the front door; investigators were forced to continue using the upstairs window for weeks while excavators worked to clear a path to the door.
Nearly three weeks later, as workmen were still hauling heaps of refuse away, someone made a grisly discovery. Langley Collyer’s body was buried beneath a pile of rubbish some six feet away from where Homer had died. He had been crushed to death in a crude booby trap he had built to protect his precious collection from intruders.
The garbage eventually removed from the Collyer house totaled more than 140 tons. No one ever learned why the brothers were stockpiling their pathetic treasure, except an old friend of the family recalled that Langley once said he was saving newspapers so Homer could catch up on his reading if he ever regained his sight. Homer and Langley Collyer make a sad but fitting parable of the way many people in the church live. Although the Collyers’ inheritance was sufficient for all their needs, they lived their lives in unnecessary, self-imposed deprivation. Neglecting abundant resources that were rightfully theirs to enjoy, Homer and Langley instead turned their home into a squalid dump. Spurning their father’s sumptuous legacy, they binged instead on the scraps of the world. Too many Christians live their spiritual lives that way. Disregarding the bountiful riches of an inheritance that cannot be defiled (1 Pet. 1:4), they scour the wreckage of worldly wisdom, collecting litter. As if the riches of God’s grace (Eph. 1:7) were not enough, as if “everything pertaining to life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3) were not sufficient, they try to supplement the resources that are theirs in Christ. They spend their lives pointlessly accumulating sensational experiences, novel teachings, clever gurus, or whatever else they can find to add to their hoard of spiritual experiences. Practically all of it is utterly worthless. Yet some people pack themselves so full of these diversions that they can’t find the door to the truth that would set them free. They forfeit treasure for trash.

I’ve been using some new Bible study software called Bible Desktop. It is written in Java, which for you non-techies simply means it can run on Windows, Mac, and Linux with a few minor differences in the way it works on each. For Bibles, dictionaries, commentaries, glossaries, etc., it uses modules from the Sword project, which means you have a whole library of books to choose from and which download and install easily from within the interface.

Some of the features I really like:

1. The user interface consists of one pane with fluidly resizeable  internal panes that contain the Bible on the left with a right sidebar containing a list of study helps that you’ve downloaded, an index of whatever resource you’ve selected, and of course the text of that resource.
2. The search feature, once the resource has been indexed is lightning fast.
3. In the English KJV version of the Bible, there are multiple “layers” you can turn on and off, such as linked Strong’s numbers, so while you are studying, you can just click on the number beside a word and the full text from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance shows up in the sidebar. I was never one to, out of curiosity, go look up a word in that behemoth of a book in our family library. This allows me to do just that in a fraction of a second. I have been amazed at the different meanings behind identical English words that in Greek or Hebrew have very different meanings. In English I have often had to stare at the text numbly for a second, scratching my head, and finally figuring out the meaning, by looking at the context around that particular difficult word. Needless to say, I love this feature!
4. There are many other features that are great too such as changing the font and size of the text, determining whether you want to line break on verses or paragraphs, tabbed view of open Bibles, a daily reading schedule and more.
5. The best one is the fact that this resource is free!

And you’ve gotta love the logo:

Sitting here in the Harrisburg International airport waiting for my flight home, I’ve been thinking back over the week at Charity Youth Bible School and wondering what aspects of it I should write about. Spiritually, it has been close to, if not the most challenging week of my life. I studied the Bible along with 569 other students in amazing depth and sincerity through over 20 hours of life changing preaching and hours of prayer and small group sharing. One of the most encouraging aspects of the experience was to meet so many other Christian youth who are passionate about Jesus Christ and His work in their lives, churches and mission outreaches.

I don’t plan to write a whole lot about the details, though I will be sharing these with my home church and friends. The messages that were preached are available to listen to from Charity Gospel Tape Ministry’s website HERE.

If you are a young person and you get the opportunity, I would highly recommend going next year!

“Whatever happens, as citizens of heaven live in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ. Then, whether I come and see you or only hear about you in my absence, I will know that you stand firm in the one Spirit, striving together with one accord for the faith of the gospel.”  - Philippians 1:27 TNIV

I just read this verse along with many others that spoke to me from the book of Philippians.

After watching a well-crafted film, the first thing I usually do is to find the “making of” video. I find it fascinating to hear the director being interviewed and learn exactly why that one shot was the way it was, to see the world, real or imagined (but preferably real) through the eyes of the director.

That’s the feeling I get after reading any one of Paul’s epistles. I’d love to hit the menu button and view the “making of” clip for Philippians, or better yet, be the one interviewing him, so I could ask the questions!

I wonder what the Christian church would be like if God had not arrested this zealous individual on that long dusty road to Damascus. Think for just a moment of the doctrines and practices that we take for granted thanks to Paul’s obedience and willingness to be the spokesman, the scribe for God as the early church ironed out the wrinkles of the Christian experience.

After a good discussion about our scripture memorization program at church, I thought I’d jot down some notes about the subject.

I have never been good at memorizing exact quotes.  I love to paraphrase an idea or saying, so I can understand it better in “my own language”.  However there is a definite advantage in memorizing Bible passages word for word.  We can share God’s Word with others even if we don’t have a Bible in our hands, we can be encouraged in our own daily lives as we meditate on the verses we’ve learned, we can refute Satan’s lies with scriptures that come to mind, and we can allow the words from the Bible to impact our day to day decisions and responses to life.  

So how do we go about it, is there an age level advantage, and how do we stay motivated?  Rather than write out a detailed work on the topic, I decided to just provide links to some websites that I have found helpful in my own scripture memorization endeavors.

Here they are:

http://www.memoryverses.org/

http://scripturememorychallenge.org/

http://www.scriptureverses.org/

This e-book in particular (http://www.memoryverses.org/how1.htm), I found to be very helpful.  I strongly recommend it.  It is very detailed and insightful.

(By the way, feel free to comment… How do you go about memorizing scripture?  Any ideas you’ve found helpful?)

And a final thought about Bible memory that has helped me…  Just Do It!

If you have 58 or so minutes to spare from your busy life, watch this video preached at a youth conference by Paul Washer. As a disclaimer, I don’t know him, however the message he proclaims is excellent.

I am in the process of listening to the audio recordings from Youth Bible School 2006 in Ephrata, PA. Very challenging messages from the various speakers: Ross Ulrich, Dale Gish, Dean Taylor (editor of The Remnant magazine), Jerry Mawhorr, Patrick Waldner (Manitoba, Canada), and David Cooper. I have been greatly influenced to examine my own personal beliefs on the various subjects that were touched on, especially the messages about Nonconformity to the World. I think I have been influenced by the world’s hopes, aspirations, and ideologies more than I would like to admit. Lots of homework to do. You can download the individual messages or order the MP3 CD containing all the messages + youth testimonies at http://charityministries.org/tapeministry/detail.cfm?index=MYBS06

Interesting post by Byron Smucker. I read his blog on occasion.

One day I’m walking on campus after a class and I happen upon a crowd of people surrounding a man with a red shirt, upon which is printed something like “No homos will go to heaven.”

Not too long after that I was walking on campus and I came upon two elderly men from The Gideon’s International handing out New Testaments, quietly and with dignity.

This topic happened to be on my mind because it tends to be a hot topic of discussion at work. This one middle aged guy goes as far as to say, they (homosexuals) are so twisted that God should kill them all. Somewhere there is a balance. I think the gentlemen handing out Bibles had a better solution. IMHO you can’t help people if you are beating them over the head with “go God’s way or you’ll fry”. There’s a balance, though finding it is a challenge.

I’ve been thinking recently on the topic of using our talents for the Lord. Reason being, I help to teach our church’s Sunday School class, and that’s what the most recent lesson was about, taken from the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-30. Some questions I was asking myself, (a few of these were mentioned in class):

• What “talents” do you/I have, and are we using them to serve the Lord?
• Am I burying my talents?
• Am I acknowledging the Source of any talents I might have, and am I giving Him the glory or “showing off” my talents as if they originated with me?
• How do our talents affect our choice of career/vocation and our calling/choice of ministry?
• How can young people develop their talents for the Lord?
• How are youth to discover their talents? (excellent question asked by a student)

As I was thinking along these thought “threads”, I happened across an excellent message by Emanuel Esh entitled, “Spiritual Ministry“. I highly recommend you listen to the whole message (click on the link), but if you are short on time, I’ll give you the gist of what it was saying to me:

• Ministry is looking around, finding someone to help, finding someone that you can help
• True ministry starts by seeking after God
• Even the most mundane tasks (scrubbing the floor, doing dishes) can be a true Spiritual ministry if the heart is there.
• Spiritual ministry begins with a heart attitude of serving others
• Sometimes ministry is born out of adversity (people who have gone through difficulties can help others who are going through the same or similar circumstance)
• See a need… Meet that need… If you ask, “Why does no else do that?” Maybe it’s because God wants you to do it.
• William & Catherine Booth were effective in their ministry because they met the needs of the people to whom they were ministering…on their level.

Lot’s of food for thought, so, what do you think? Feel free to comment.

Matthew 17: 15 Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water. 16 And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him. 17 Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me. 18 And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.

I've heard from various people about the idea of "having faith" for others. An example I read this morning is listed above. The lunatick son… Jesus often tested the faith of those he healed (the Syrophoenecian Woman), but that wasn't the case here. The lunatick man had no faith to be healed because of his demon possession. It wasn't until Jesus cast out the devil that he could be free to trust in the Lord Jesus as his Savior. In how many instances today could this happen? Am I willing to "have faith" for others and pray for them even when they don't show any response and perhaps even reject me and/or anything to do with Christianity?