I will be careful to lead a blameless life

I will set before my eyes no vile thing

I will not have anything to do with evil

Psalms 101:2-4, NIV(1978 version)

 

Mission statements have become a big thing in recent years for business. Of course, the main focus for all for-profit businesses is to maximize shareholder wealth (make as much money as you can) but in modern times that has not been sufficient. Large corporations now feel that they need something more to lure investors, as well as to accomplish goals that are outside the incentive of wealth, so they have added things like being environmentally friendly and helping the needy. These are certainly worthwhile pursuits and give businesses a focus that goes beyond just making a profit. While some organizations have mission statements that are merely tools for creating more demand for their company shares, most mission statements are an attempt to reflect the idea that business has a duty to do more than simply seek profit at all costs. In other words, they help the business to be a better "citizen" if you will.

 

While mission statements for business are a relatively new phenomena, the idea has been around for thousands of years. Many of the righteous men and women of Bible times had statements of their own that would indicate their desire to do more than just live and make money while they were here on earth. In other words, they saw the big picture and tried to do their best to do more than just live for selfish purposes while they were here on earth.

 

King David is a perfect example of such a person. So impressive was he when he was just a youth, that God recognized him as a man after His own heart and decided to make him king. The passage above is but one example of David's desire to do something more than just live for himself - he was determined to live for God to the utmost of his ability. Just looking at these three short lines from the 101st Psalm and you can see that David wanted to excel for God. Furthermore, this desire was so important that he put it down in writing. It is a mission statement in its own right, but it is so much more impressive that the "social conscience" type of focus you see for so many businesses in their mission statements. 

 

David literally wanted to be perfect for God!

 

Just look at the individual elements of the statement above: "I will be careful to lead a blameless life." Some versions translate the word blameless as "perfect". Some of us would be content with just not sinning so much, but David set the standard we need to be looking for: he was trying to be blameless! He knew he could never be perfect on his own, but this was still his goal. Like the marksman who practices target shooting every day, David was aiming for the bullseye every single time. And while we read of failures in his life, one has to admit that he was a lot more successful at hitting the center of the target than most, because he was aiming for it more than most.

 

It was his daily mission!

 

As one who had notably stumbled in the case of Bathsheba, he was determined to "set before his eyes no vile thing". Would that help you in your daily walk? Would it help you in areas such as "surfing the internet" or "flipping through" the channels and screens on your television and cell phone? This was but one more thing that David was determined to do on a daily basis. It had a way of keeping his heart pure and such a standard will help us as well. 

 

Finally, David caps off his mission statement with "I will have nothing to do with evil". Just think how much trouble that kept him out of and imagine how much freer from trouble your own life would be if this was your daily goal. In modern times, most people have ceased to even recognize that there is such a thing as evil; but we can be sure of this: It is lurking behind every corner and is coming boldly into the open more and more. Our lives and our families are falling apart because of our lack of recognition of evil. This decline has spilled over into the Lord's church and into our society at large, creating a continual decay that is becoming more consequential each day.

 

But it does not have to be that way! If we could adopt these three simple components of King David's "mission statement" and make them a regular part of our daily lives, it would completely change the course of our lives. And when the course of an individual's life is changed, it has a way of improving everything from their family to the church to the nation. I for one believe that we could use such a change, and I am determined to do my best to live with a similar mission statement of my own. I recently wrote this passage down and carry it with me and have already found it to have tremendous benefits. Do you think that such an adoption of David's inspired "mission statement" would help you in your daily life? Don't you think that it might be worth finding out?

May you live to see your children's children.

Psalms 128:6

 

Picture this: You are riding along with a seven-year-old, a six-year-old, a four-year-old, and a nearly three-year-old. You are in a van in a national park and have a ways to go. For miles, the two oldest have been exchanging "knock, knock" jokes with the favorite being one that involves bananas and oranges that has been going on for about five minutes because the six and seven year-olds have a hard time mastering the punch line. Then the seven-year-old switches to something new - something she has made up herself and is presenting to the world for the first time ever. It goes something like this: 

"Knock, knock."

"Who's there?"

"Potato"

"Potato, who?"

"Potato on your head!"

 

The punch line is lost on me, but the grandkids die with laughter. Emboldened, the seven-year-old goes again with the knock, knock and the three-year-old (now in full swing of the rhythm) replies in her sweet little voice that is practically bursting with anticipation, "Who is there?" as if she has no earthly idea as to what is coming. Again, the punch line is flawlessly delivered and the back seats roar with laughter. The three-year-old now tells her own joke, beginning with the phrase "Knocka, knocka" and the crowd goes wild.

 

We have only ten miles or so to go and I am barely hanging on.

 

This in a nutshell was our trip to Big Bend this last week. We went in three vehicles with all of our kids and their spouses and all seven of our grandchildren and had the time of our life. We enjoyed a lot of beauty, but the highlight for us was the time spent on the rides with our grandchildren. We were delighted to have them, and our kids were surprisingly willing to let them go with us. We had little cell-service, the kids had no electronics, and we just savored one another's company for three days.

 

This showed me why the blessing "May you live to see your children's children" is included amongst all the other blessings in the Word of God. Grandkids really are one of the greatest blessings that men have ever received. They have a way of helping we moms and dads to make up for all that we missed when we were in the middle of life and trying to raise our own children. Grandchildren are a breath of fresh air in a world that has grown stale for so many as they age. They give an injection of life that is refreshing and packed with joy. 

 

Grandchildren, like children, are near the very top of the blessings that God has heaped upon us! 

 

It makes me realize how good God has been to me. It also makes me realize the great and very real responsibility that I have to make sure that I am doing my part to prepare these precious bundles of energy for this life and the one to come. Of course, the main responsibility lies with their parents, just as the responsibility for training up our children primarily fell to Caroly and me. It is a big job, to be sure, but one of the most pleasant tasks that God has given. The question is do we see it? More important, are we enjoying every second of it? 

The righteous detest the dishonest, the wicked detest the upright.

Proverbs 29:27, NIV

 

One of our political candidates for president was holding a rally the other day. She was in the middle of extolling the "virtues" of abortion when a pro-life protester in the audience called out, "Jesus is Lord". She turned to him and said, "You're at the wrong rally" and the crowd roared with delight. Now, in her defense, I don't know if this modern-day Jezebel was responding to the comment or to the fact that there were pro=life people in her crowd. It really doesn't matter, for the point is the same: These people were at the wrong rally because the righteous and the unrighteous have nothing in common. In fact, as the inspired passage above reveals, they detest one another.

 

Here, then, is the crux of the problem of our modern times in a nutshell. It cannot be denied that there are some people who believe in God and believe that He must be obeyed. On the other side are those who seem to hold God's authority (and therefore His commands) in complete disdain. The two sides cannot co-exist because they have nothing in common. Here is how the Apostle Paul put it:

Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what partnership has Christ with Belial (the devil), or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? 

II Corinthians 6:14-15, NASB

 

I believe one of the great struggles that Christians have is that they very much want to convince people to repent who either do not want to repent or who do not see the need for doing so. Sometimes this leads the Christian to want to compromise in order to get along - but we must understand that this is a mistake that will prove to be fatal. The fact is that God will not compromise with Satan, and this necessarily means that God's children cannot compromise with those who have chosen (at least for the time) to follow in the ways of this wicked world. 

 

It is quite true that Christians have the duty to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them - this is an unchangeable commandment. However, we must never get to the point that we think we then have a duty to "meet them halfway" in their pursuit of sin. Loving and wanting the best for someone does not require that we compromise with them in their evil. In fact, we are to avoid even being in close fellowship with those who have chosen to follow Satan's ways rather than those of God.

 

Understanding these truths are critical to knowing how to proceed. We may be tempted to go after a "united states" or a "united church" when this very type of pursuit has already been forbidden by God if the requirement of this uniting is to go along with sin. I'm not saying that we don't try to keep our nation the United States, nor am I saying that we should not try to be united as a church. What I am saying is that we cannot pursue this through compromise in areas of sin. We can indeed pursue unity, and it is in fact highly desirable to do so, but it has to be with the insistence that those who are promoting evil repent of their sins prior to our being able to be a people who are one in direction and purpose. 

 

Otherwise, sadly, we will have to admit that we are at the wrong rally!

 

It is time for Christians to decide who they are going to follow. Our founders left us with a nation that was to be united under God's principles. We seem to have forgotten that in recent years. I'm not certain as to exactly why that is the case, but maybe it has something to do with this: Many Christians have ceased being students of the Word. Because of that, we have morphed into a type of religious belief that allows us to think that going along with sin is equivalent with loving our enemies and praying for them. We do not read the passages that tell us that the righteous and the wicked detest one another, and even if we do, we really don't believe it.

 

We have come to a point where we actually think that we can associate with the wicked to the extent that we give our tacit "stamp of approval" to their wicked conduct. Christians then think that they can tolerate sexual immorality, perversion, and even abortion and still be pleasing to God. This is a notion that we are going to have to disabuse ourselves of if we are ever to become obedient to our Father in Heaven. It is true that we are to love the sinner - this we must never forget. But at the same time, we cannot forget that the righteous are to have nothing in common with the wicked. We have to, in a loving manner, insist that they repent of their wicked ways if they are ever to enjoy the fellowship that they desire to have with Christ and His followers.

 

If we don't, we might find out on that final Day that we have been at the wrong rally... and what do we think might be the result of such an error when we appear before God at the Judgment? It is something to think about, wouldn't you agree? 

 

 

 

 

Like a city whose walls are broken down is a man who lacks self-control.

Proverbs 25:28, NIV

 

When I was four years old and my brother was seven, Santa Clause brought us a pair of boxing gloves for Christmas. In my estimation, you couldn't have gotten a better present for my brother or a worse one for me if you had tried. I'm not sure if this was a part of some sort of diabolical plan to rid me from the family once and for all or if Mom and Dad were just tired of having to do all of the discipline themselves, but whatever the case, I was sure that the arrival of the "gift" did not portend well for me at all.

 

In retrospect, I came to realize that Dad was just trying to get us to learn that ancient art of self-defense, and that it was in a strange way an act of love rather than the "puredee-old" meanness that I had viewed the gift. But, like so many lessons we are given when young, the actual awareness of its benefit was lost on me for quite a number of years. In their defense, they also had a gift under the tree which turned out to be one of my favorites of all-time: A genuine Bozo punching bag! And it wasn't one of those cheapies that you had to hang from a hook either. It was a full-size inflatable bag in the shape of Bozo the clown with a weight on the bottom. If you punched him hard enough, the back of his head would actually touch the floor before springing back up to give you another shot.

 

So, in a subtle sort of a way, the gifts were actually therapy - the gloves for my brother, who would pummel me without mercy, and the Bozo bag for me. After Steve would give me a lesson in self-defense, I would go teach Bozo a lesson or two of my own.

 

It is within this lesson in self-defense that my parents taught that I could understand what God does for us in a more important way. The passage above compares a man without self-control to a city with broken down walls. In the days of Solomon when this proverb was written, the walls of the city were the most important line of defense for the people who lived there. If a city's walls were strong, any enemy would have to break them down in order to get to the people inside. While they were attempting this, the people on the wall could pick them off from above. As long as the wall stood, the people inside that wall had a tremendous advantage, but once the walls were breached, the advantage immediately went over to the invaders. 

 

This is a simple lesson, but it packs a powerful lesson! Through Solomon's inspired writings, God is letting us know just how important self-control is. We can see it in example after example, too. A man who cannot control his temper is eventually going to transform from a seven year old with a magnificent advantage over all four year old opponents, to a mere clown who is going to take his share of unnecessary beatings. A man who cannot say no to addictive substances is eventually going to become a slave to them. A man who cannot control his passion will live a life of fornication and adultery that will pollute everyone who comes close to him.

 

The list goes on and on, but we can see the point. God is not trying to be cruel when he tells us to maintain our self-control; rather, He is protecting us. He would spare us from the consequences that such breaches of discipline and control can cause, if we would only listen. The lessons of life are often difficult, but they are necessary. A four year old needs to learn to handle himself so that he won't be a punching bag for every bully who comes along is one lesson I learned from the boxing gloves, but it wasn't until later that I learned the true art of self-defense. It wasn't until I learned to control my tongue that I stopped taking so many unnecessary beatings. It wasn't until I stopped yielding to peer pressure that I learned the lesson of avoiding unpleasant consequences that so often come from going along with the crowd.

 

There are countless other lessons that you and I have learned through the years, but you see the point. A person who practices self-control doesn't need to spend so much time learning the art of self-defense, because they avoid making enemies in the first place. It is true that we have to take certain stands in life - this is part of self-control when you think about it, for there are times you need a strong wall of determination to do right between you and your enemies who want you to do the wrong thing. But a pleasant truth of succeeding in life is found in the truth that a man with self-control doesn't make a lot of enemies in the first place. 

 

Do you have self-control?