Gleanings From The Word: December 2020

Wednesday, December 30, 2020

Come Lord Jesus

If anyone does not love the Lord, he is to be accursed. Maranatha!

(1 Corinthians 16:22 NASB)

2020 has been a perilous year. The world has been devastated by an unseen virus. Our country seems to be divided more than ever along racial, political, and cultural lines. We have just finished an election cycle where many are questioning its validity.

A President appears to have been elected that does not champion the value of human life in the womb. Despite all of this, Jesus will return and will make all things right.

Life is a battle. That is why we are told to use every piece of God’s armor to fight the battle (Ephesians 6:13). We lose a few of the encounters, but we continue to engage. We stay in the fight because we know we win the war. Read the end of the book. The offensive weapon we have is prayer. We are told to pray at all times (Ephesians 6:18), in good times and in bad. When we see the answers to our prayers and when we don’t. Our heroes of faith of old saw things as done before they were done.

It is never over until it is over. In Psalms 98:9, we are told that Jesus is coming to judge the earth with justice and fairness. We will never have peace on earth fully until the Prince of Peace returns. Until that time, we must not shrink back but must maintain. Only prayer, spiritual warfare, and the preaching of the Gospel to all nations will hasten the return of the King.

We must storm the very gates of hell with the mantra on our lips like the first century Church, Maranatha, come Lord Jesus.

The image used with permission by Microsoft.

Ken Barnes, the author of “The Chicken Farm and Other Sacred Places” YWAM Publishing
Email: kenbarnes737@gmail.com
website: Ken Barnes' Book Site
Blogs: http://kensblog757.blogspot.com
http://gleanings757.blogspot.com

Monday, December 21, 2020

We All Have a Story

One generation will praise Your works to another,
And will declare Your mighty acts. (Psalms 145:4 NASB)

We are all in debt to Christ for his marvelous grace and the previous generation who told us about that grace. We, in turn, pay our indebtedness by telling the next generation about God’s unmerited favor. We all have a story to tell.

As I wrote my first manuscript, I was plagued by recurring thoughts. Reflections would linger in my mind; Who are you to write a book? What do you have to say? Nobody is going to want to read your book. As I dwelt on these notions, I didn’t feel like I could write a sentence, much less a book. Despite these mental images, I still had a desire in my heart to tell of God’s faithfulness in my life. I decided to write it as a love letter to God. If no one read it, yet, if I wrote it with love in my heart for him, I was pretty sure God would read it. Also, I wrote it for my grandchildren and those who would follow, as a remembrance of life, but more importantly, about the God that I served.

The main problem we have is that we think we have no story to tell. C.S. Lewis once said that “there are no ordinary people.” We think that we have nothing to say because we have never been a pastor or a missionary. We conclude that because we have never been delivered from a great sin—just a bunch of little ones, that we have nothing interesting enough to share. Wrong. God most often shows up in the small details of our lives. It is in the fine print of our lives that God proves his faithfulness. If God is not real in our everyday lives, then he is not real at all,

If God has redeemed your life and given you beauty for ashes, you have a story to tell. An experience is never really fully enjoyed until it is shared with someone. Some may communicate it verbally, others through written language, but we all must praise God's works from one generation to another.

The image is used with permission by Microsoft.

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

No Reserves, No Retreats, No Regrets

Don’t put out the Spirit’s fire. (1 Thessalonians 5:19 GW)

William Bordon, after he graduated from high school in 1904, was called to be a missionary. At different points in Bordon's short life, he wrote in the back of his Bible, no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.

Though he came from a very wealthy family, wealth did not possess him. Early on in his life, a friend expressed that he was throwing his life away by becoming a missionary—he wrote in his Bible, no reserves. After he graduated from Yale, he was offered very lucrative positions—he penned, no retreats. His missionary call narrowed to a Muslim group in China. After doing graduate work at Princeton Seminary, he left for Egypt to study Arabic before arriving in China. In Egypt, he contracted spinal meningitis and within a month was dead at age twenty-five. Before his death, under the other two notations he had made in his Bible, he wrote—no regrets.

William Borden's seemingly untimely death a waste of human life? Absolutely not. Thousands of people have read his story and have been encouraged in their missionary call. God never wastes any of our sorrows.

Things happen to Christians. We experience what we don't expect, and some expectations don't come to fruition. The Christian life often entails disappointments that we can't understand, but God uses them for his ultimate good. God lives in the eternal now. God makes decisions based on past, present, and future considerations. Humans remember the past imperfectly, know what is happening now, and nothing about the future. God dwells on eternal priorities, man on temporal ones. Our heavenly Father always knows best.

Church history is littered with people who have done great things for God yet had become sullen and cynical at the end of their lives. Things happened to them that may have seemed unfair or unjust. Some ended their lives in unbelief rather than faith in God. We, like William Borden, at the end of our journey, need to be able to say, no reserves, no retreats, no regrets.