One of the most dangerous things that a Christian can do is to become fatalistic. Fatalism is the acceptance of something, usually something  sinful or evil, as inevitable. Nowhere is this more true in recent years than in the way we view our political leaders in America and around the world. But this type of attitude will eventually prove to be fatal, whether it be in a community, a nation, or in the church. This is why we need to pray!

 

Let me be quick to say that it is not unreasonable to give in to the notion of fatalism. In recent years, the politicians within the United States have lost so much credibility that many regular people are no longer convinced that our elections are fair and honest. People become discouraged when this happens - and rightfully so, but we should not allow that discouragement to cause us to just give up to the point where we stop voting. What would happen, do you think, if only the devil's followers voted in our elections? Do you think that the results would be better or worse? This is why we need to pray and never give up!

 

Many parents are becoming discouraged as well. They sometimes see their kids taking part in unwholesome and destructive activities, and they are concerned. These parents will often plead, beg, and bribe their children to change, but often to no avail. Usually this state of affairs comes about because the parent was not as actively involved in the proper disciplining of their children as they were growing, but sometimes the child just goes off on their own. These parents see their kids acting with disrespect and spite and it makes them so angry that they become discouraged. So often they just give up. But, what will happen when a parent stops trying and lets the world have their children? This is why we need to pray and never give up!

 

And then there are the times when we have just had enough. Our bills are so high and income so insufficient that we feel like we are drowning. Or we have a debilitating accident or illness that leaves our body and our spirit crushed. Perhaps someone close to us has betrayed us in such a way that we wonder if we can ever trust anyone ever again. People many times will turn to alcohol or drugs to temporarily escape these troubles, but by doing so they only compound their woes. We don't have to wonder what will happen when we get to this point, for we already know. This is why we need to pray and never give up!

 

The effective prayer of a righteous man cab accomplish much.

James 5:16, NAS

 

I think we forget this truth, sometimes. We see the consequences of past failures as permanent, so we many times simply give up. This, dear people, is what fatalism will do.

 

But for those who have a higher purpose and a clearer vision, they will not give up. Such people have genuinely given themselves to the service of their Lord and they realize that they could not let Him down in such a cowardly way. By faith (and remember that true faith comes only by hearing the words of Christ - Romans 10:17) these servants of God understand that they need only do their part - their duty! God will take care of the rest. By faith, we believe that. So when things go wrong we must be determined to never give up and never give in. God has snatched victory from the seemingly certain jaws of defeat too many times in the past for us to doubt Him now.

 

So don't give up! Our duty is not to be righteous only when things work out the way we want them to. Our duty is to press on to the goal of Heaven and we can only reach that goal - both for ourselves and our loved ones - if we refuse to give up. We must not give in to the popular tide of fatalism that has seemed to overwhelm our modern world. To do so would be to let both God and Christ down. Their love for us deserves more than giving in to that fate, doesn't it? We are going to win, if we will simply keep pressing forward and doing the things that God expects us to do. We will lose some heartbreaking battles, it's true, but we will win the ultimate fight and receive a crown of salvation if we will just keep going. God will help us every step of the way, if we will only let Him. This type of help is accessed only by prayer.

 

So, don't give up. And don't forget to pray!  

"The most important one", answered Jesus, "is this: Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all you mind and with all your strength."

Mark 12:29, NIV (1978)

 

Have you ever wondered why Jesus didn't just answer the question as to what was the most important command with a simple reply of "love God with all you have"? For that matter, why didn't God just put it that way when the command was initially given way back in Deuteronomy? Maybe the answer has to do with balance.

 

William Danforth, the founder of the Purina pet food empire, gave an example of the "four-square life". He talked about the need for balance in our lives and used the illustration of a square to help visualize his thoughts. Pulling from the Lord's greatest commandment, he realized that life had four main facets - namely, our religious, physical, mental and social components. He compared the heart to the social side of life, the soul to  our religious side, the mind to our mental side and the strength to our physical side. Fail to have balance in these areas, and your whole life would be out of balance.

 

Mr. Danforth also gave his opinion that if we over-weighted any of these areas then our entire life would suffer. I'm not sure that I agree with (or even understand) everything he had to say on this subject, but he does have a valid point. God wants our lives to have balance because that's the way He made us. We all have precious relationships that mean everything to us. This is proper, but we just need to make sure that our relationship with He and Jesus are the most important.

 

Further, we are spiritual beings at our core, so we must not ever forget the importance of our eternal nature. We all have a soul that is basically the essence of who we are, and that side of us will live forever. Since that is the case, we need to keep that truth at the center of everything we do. When William Danforth described the religious side of this four-square life, he insisted that this side had to be the base, or the foundation of that square. This was meant to reflect the Bible's teaching that our spiritual houses (our lives) had to be placed on the foundation of Jesus Christ. 

 

When Jesus spoke of the mind, He was certainly stressing the importance of thinking. God created us with brains designed to reason, and the importance of that mental aspect must not be ignored. We need to use our efforts to discover what the Bible says by reading it, and then we must go beyond that by thinking about what it says. We then need to be considering how God's instruction applies to every aspect of our daily lives, and then make wise decisions as to how to apply those truths to everything we do.

 

The final side involved this physical body that God has given us. With it we can earn a living as well as take part in needed recreation. We must be careful, however, for with our strength we can not only be productive, but we can be destructive. We can not only save lives, but we can also take lives. We also have an obligation to keep this physical structure that God has blessed us with physically fit, in order that we might serve Him as best as we can for as long as He sees necessary for us to fulfil our service to Him.

 

Again, it is vital for us to keep these four sides of our lives in balance if we are to serve the Master in the most efficient way. It is easy to get so involved with the physical that we lose sight of the spiritual, and by doing so we end up trading the temporal for the eternal. It is also tempting to spend so much time with those we love that we forget the One who loves us so. And we all know that it is very natural to slip into a pattern of habit where we just go through the motions without really thinking about what we are here for. We truly do need a "four-square" life in order for our lives to be the most effective they can be for God.

 

And whatever we call it, be it four-square, balance, or anything else, we must never forget that God will accept nothing less than our best efforts in each of these vital areas of our lives. It is when we have that proper perspective of a balanced service to God that our lives will have the impact that God wants is to have. We have been given many gifts, and the heart, soul, mind and strength that He has infused into each one of us are among the greatest of those gifts. If we can see that and use all four sides of our being correctly, we can then become the type of servants that God intended for us to be when he graciously gave us our lives in the first place. If we are grateful, and if we love Him, we will do nothing less than use all of ourselves in our daily service to God.

 

And then, there will be Heaven! 

 

By the way, if you are finding these daily articles helpful, you might like to visit our Common Sense Christian YouTube channel, or listen to our weekly Common Sense Christian podcasts. I will try to have at least one episode up on each Monday starting at 7:00 AM CST. As always, thanks for your kindness in taking the time to share and like these daily articles on facebook. It really helps and I sincerely appreciate your efforts in doing so. 

 

 

 

A person's wisdom yields patience; it is to one's glory to overlook an offense.

Proverbs 19:11, NIV

 

"Here lies the body of William Jay, who died failing to yield the right of way.

He was right, dead right, as he sped along, but he is just as dead, as if he were wrong."

Old poem of unknown origin

 

I like these two thoughts, that you we above. But at the same time, I don't like them at all. The truths contained within them sometimes hit too close to home. The first saying is from the Word of God, and therefore it is worthy of our attention. The second came from a newspaper article written nearly a hundred years ago. Both contain truths that are worth exploring, and in today's article, I want to do just that.

 

The Scripture above contains one of the great "secrets" to a happy life, if we would but heed the inspired writer's advice. We live in such a litigious world that it seems that everybody is suing somebody for some wrong that was done to them, whether that wrong was genuine or merely imagined, We see lifelong friendships torn apart because one of the friends took offense at some slight that may have been given. Then for of a myriad of foolish reasons, one or both of these now former friends simply refused to give the effort that friendship requires. Since neither was willing to simply overlook the offense and move on, they both suffer the consequence of trading a friend for an enemy, and both are poorer for that exchange.  

 

And in the little poem above from some anonymous, but brilliant writer, we see another tragedy. We witness a man who was clearly in the right, that insisted on maintaining that right, even though it was seemingly in a matter of small consequence. Still, small importance or not, he heroically maintained his rightness to the end, even giving his life as the price for doing so. It's a silly poem, I know, but it contains a serious lesson. For those refusing to yield the right of way, even if it means some slight annoyance for doing so, some people actually end up going to their death. I wonder how many people have lost their lives for the simple fact that they couldn't merely "tap the brakes"?

 

Even more serious is the case in which a person endangers their eternal soul for the simple reason that they were too selfish to tap the brakes. I wonder how many people have lost an eternal home with God because they did not love their neighbor enough to overlook a minor offense. I also wonder how many people they took with them on that suicidal mission to maintain what was rightfully theirs. For just as surely as there have been countless fatal accidents that cost the lives of not only the offended but also those of their innocent passengers, there must be countless more incidents involving eternal separation from God where people have taken others with them in their reckless pursuit of being right for matters of small consequence.

 

Now, please don't misunderstand what I am saying. I know that their are causes that are so important that we are expected to take a stand, no matter the cost. But we have to admit that there are many more situations where it would have been far more honorable and far more loving, to have just overlooked the offense and moved on. God is willing to overlook our offenses no matter how big, if we will just take care of them in His way. Jesus told us to ask for forgiveness from God in the same way that we are willing to forgive those who have sinned against us. 

 

Since that is our God-given standard, it behooves us all to take a little time - and a little effort, to put aside our petty differences and simply yield the right of way when it is prudent to do so. It will make this life a whole lot happier, and it will accrue to an eternal reward than none of us really deserve. It's something to think about, isn't it? 

"For I know the plans I have for you", declares the LORD, "Plans to prosper you and not to harm you,

plans to give you a hope and a future."

Jeremiah 29:11

 

As we stand on the brink of a new year, thinking men and women cannot help but be concerned. Those of us in America are looking upon a nation that we hardly recognize anymore. Our cities are crime-ridden and filled with illegal drug use. Our borders are being opened in such a way as to allow thousands of people a day from who knows where to enter our country to do who knows what. Regardless of what we think about open borders, we cannot deny the tremendous impact these "undocumented" people are having upon our resources. We have so many illegals in the state I live in that we are having to spend millions of dollars just to transport them to other states who frankly don't have the capability to take care of them either.

 

We have elections where we cannot even tell who is voting nor what the actual count is. Our banks can handle millions of transactions involving billions of dollars a day, but we cannot seem to be able to figure out how to correctly count the votes in a single election. Think about that for a moment: Not only can we figure out to the penny the transfer of billions of dollars between multiple institutions, but we can also do it in an accurate and timely way and even know the exact identity of the person behind each transaction. Yet, we are expected to believe that the counting of a few million votes is so incredibly complicated that we sometimes need months to tally them and still have no idea who actually cast these votes nor how many times they voted in the first place. Third world countries can count their votes in a few hours. It kind of makes you wonder what's going on behind the scenes, doesn't it?

 

We have diseases that are now shutting down entire countries every few years. In our medically advanced world, it seems unreasonable that we have so devolved in our ability to take care of the sick that our response should be to lock people behind doors in order to keep them well. We have traffic cameras that can tell who ran a stop light in a city on the other side of the planet. We have DNA technology so advanced that we can tell who committed a crime 30 years ago. Yet we claim we cannot tell where a disease has originated nor who was responsible for it when all of the evidence points to a problem that was engineered by humans, not nature. Then those in charge come up with "cures" that end up being just as deadly as the illness. 

 

Thanks for the pep talk!

 

But what can we do? Is it too late for us?

 

These are the types of questions that righteous people surely must have asked during Jeremiah's time. They, too, lived in a nation that was filled with sin, corruption and violence. They, too, were beaten down with one crisis after another. They, too, were left reeling from the effects of corrupt leaders and incompetent officials. But do you know what they found? They found that the problems that were so prolific in their times were still solvable. God Himself revealed to them that they didn't have to look forward to a continually declining nation - at least not if they were willing to do something about it. The fact is that there have always been periods within our history that have been filled with seemingly insurmountable problems, and righteous people have always been expected by God to do something about these problems. 

 

Think about that: Even if they didn't think that they were responsible for the problems, they were still responsible for the cures!

 

Righteous men and women have always had the unpleasant duty of cleaning up after the mess that the unrighteous have left. Why is that, we might be wondering? Maybe it's because we allowed so many of these problems to happen in the first place. We stood idly by when we could have stopped the cancer from advancing, but we thought someone else would surely take care of it. We were often content to pretend that these problems were not our problems so we just went on with our lives, We hired and appointed and elected people to take care of the problems, but we found that didn't work. Usually the people who were willing to fill these positions were the problem in the first place. There is a common sense rule we all seemed to have forgotten, in that you should never permit the person who committed the crime to decide what the punishment should be. The punishment that these sociopaths come up with always involves more pain for the innocent. We need to wake up and figure that out.

 

So, what is the solution? It's simply this. If we truly want to do something about the sin in this wicked world then we are going to have to take a personal role. We are going to have to repent of our own sins first. We are going to have to turn to God's Word to see what He wants. We are going to have to earnestly and regularly pray for guidance. And... we are then going to have to act!

 

It's a big challenge, I know, but it is possible to fix the problems we have. How do I know this? Because God has promised that He has plans to prosper us, not to harm us. But this promise has always, always, always been only for the righteous who have been willing to live a life in obedience to His will. It has never been meant for an unrepentant and evil people. If we want righteous change then we are going to have to have righteous effort in accomplishing that change. It will be hard, but it can be done. Our children deserve that change, so we must work towards it. It is not too late, but we have to start now!

 

It begins by returning to God. If you find that you have drifted apart from Him, perhaps the best efforts for this new year could be spent in getting back to Him. It's not too late for the righteous, but the righteous do have to start. Why not devote yourself to God in this new year to do just that?