Some Things Never Change

Life Project Blog

John’s last letter. So short, so telling. John is writing to his friend and brother Gaius.  He seems to have been a leader in the church, and even though there are other mentions of men with this name in Scripture, it was a very common name; we can’t be sure if he has other mentions or not.  Gaius was obviously serving others, and sharing God’s love with them. He was hosting a group of missionaries, apparently, and these workers were people he didn’t know.

Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well. It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth.

Dear…

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The Great Commission

This is part two of a two-part series on the Great Commission. You might be asking “Where is the first part?” I skipped it. Every evangelical follower of Christ already knows Part 1 of the Great Commission.

¹⁸ And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. ¹⁹ Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: – Matthew 28:18-19

A Need for Reformation

The Protestant Reformation saw the advancement of the Gospel and an understanding of right doctrine that hadn’t been seen since the time of Christ and the Apostles. It drew Christianity out of the dark ages of the faith; a time when the Scripture was forbidden to be read in the language of the people, when superstition reigned, where abominations within the church leadership was a norm, and when a knowledge of the Truth was virtually unknown. But to the glory of God, He rekindled the fire of the Gospel, and it spread like a fire in a barn of hay. The Reformation has given us such a wealth of knowledge of the truth of Christ’s teaching that I personally will never be able to ingest all of. Between the writings of John Calvin and John Gill, Matthew Henry and Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli, to name only a few, the deep understandings of the Bible are left to us to read.

What is a Farmer

“… a plan was made for the farm. We have stuck to that plan….. The essence of it is this: First of all, the farm must furnish food for our own table – not in a roundabout way, mind you, but directly. Ninety percent of the farmers in our neighborhood were supplying their tables from the store – buying canned stuff, buying flour and meal and potatoes and salt meat, buying practically everything they ate. The only way they had of paying their store bills was by selling their corn and wheat – which they did for a considerable loss. Only a few of the farmers knew how to put up sugar-cured ham and bacon. Gardening seemed to be a lost art….
We intended to change that. No matter how much of our land it would take, we meant to make the farm furnish our table directly with milk and cream and butter, the best of meat, poultry and eggs, fruits and garden stuff. Our land must do that for us in the end; so, we argued, why not let it be done directly? In quality and cost we could do better for ourselves in that way than if we got our food second-handed. The largest item in the cost of living must be taken care of first, and in a way that insured the greatest possible economy.”

~Happy Hollow Farm, W R Lighton, published in 1914

In modern society we call a person who cultivates hundreds, maybe thousands, of acres of wheat, corn, soybeans, etc. a farmer. But is that what a farmer really is? I’d venture to say that is an industrial producer.; no different from a factory worker; no different from General Motors, they are both subsidized the same anyway.

The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend…?

There is a common saying that goes “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”. But is the statement entirely true and accurate? If my desire is, for instance, to get abortion outlawed in America, is anybody that agrees with me in this goal my friend? What about an Orthodox Jew, or maybe a Muslim, or an Atheist? Does them having the same political or social desires and goals as you and I make them our friend?

Absolutely not! For my ultimate desire is for the glory of Jesus Christ. So I cannot befriend a Jew, or Muslim, or Atheist, not even for political gain; for they hate Christ. But in modern American society, especially what calls itself the “religious right”, we see forsaking of the glory of Christ in order to attain some sort of social or political gain.

And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him. – Colossians 3:17

Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. – 1 Corinthians 10:31