knowledgeofgoodandevil

Wow! Do we live in crazy times now, or what? Absolutely crazy.

I have to tell you, God totally knew this was coming. It never caught Him by surprise. He knew when this was coming and He knows how long it will last. He has heard every one of His children’s prayers. Every one! He has placed each of those prayers into golden bowls, which He cherishes.

We are not alone in this world. God sits on His throne. He listens to the prayers of His children. He sends out His angels to take charge of us. He has the power to stop this whole thing at this very moment. Why doesn’t He stop it? Why doesn’t He stop it like so many of us are praying for? He can. Yet He doesn’t.

This is the time. Now is the time to come back to the Lord. Those of you who know Him, He wants us to come back to Him. Just like the questions He asked of Job.

Have you ever in your life commanded the morning? Job 38:12

Have you ever entered into the springs of the sea or walked in the recesses of the deep? Job 38:16

Have the gates of death been revealed to you, or have you seen the gates of deep darkness? Job 38:17

Have you understood the expanse of the earth? Tell Me, if you know all this? Job 38:18

God is asking Job, in the midst of terrible loss, if Job knows who God is. Job has lost everything: his children, his servants, his wealth and now his health. He sits on an ash heap, scratching his sores and feeling quite low. This is where God meets him. In this moment, God doesn’t try to console Job with comforting words. He, instead, asks Job questions that reveal God’s power and God’s might. God establishes who He is to remind Job. Job has known, He just needs a reminder.

Just like I needed a reminder last year. I have known God for a long time. But like Job, I sat on an ash heap scratching my sores and wondering where God went. God didn’t go anywhere. He promises He will never leave us or forsake us. Yet I believed a lie that God had left me.

In this time, God is asking all of His people to remember who He is. We need to turn our eyes back to the One, who even the winds and seas obey Him. It’s easy to do, forget our God. I’ve done it. Job did it. As some point in the believer’s life we all take our eyes off of God.

Peter did it when he jumped out of the boat to meet Jesus walking on water. Peter could walk on the water as long as his eyes were on Jesus. The second he took his eyes off of Jesus, he sunk.

O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free! (Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus by Helen H. Lemmel)

Believers need to turn their eyes upon Jesus. And if you don’t know the Lord. Now is the time. This video explains the gospel so well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K48-Li7lIfA

All of us need to turn our eyes upon Jesus.

Right now we are living in unprecedented times. I’ve been on this planet for quite a few years and in all my years, I’ve never experienced anything like this. None of us have. What we need is encouragement in this time. Here is a favorite passage I read over and over while walking through the valley last year. This is Psalms 34, starting with verse 4.

“I sought the Lord, and He answered me, And delivered me from all my fears.

They looked to Him and were radiant, and their faces will never be ashamed.

This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.

The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them.

O taste and see that the Lord is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

O fear the Lord, you His saints; for to those who fear Him there is no want.

The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; but they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.

Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you th fear of the Lord.

Who is the man who desires life and loves length of days that he may see good?

Keep your tongue from evil and lips from speaking deceit.

Depart from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.

The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and His ears are open to their cry.

The face of the Lord is against evildoers, to cut off the memory of them from the earth.

The righteous cry and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

He keeps all his bones, Not one of them is broken.

Evil shall slay the wicked, and those who hate the righteous will be condemned.

The Lord redeems the soul of His servants, and none of those who take refuge in Him will be condemned.” Psalms 34

God loves all people. He sent His Son to Earth to die on a cross for our sins. He wants all people to come to Him. There is no time like the present to seek God. Ask Him into your life and be saved. It’s not too late. But soon it will be. We aren’t promised tomorrow, we only have today.

As you read this, we are all on lockdown right now because of the corona virus. I don’t know about you, but when I first heard that Trump had declared a state of emergency, I got a little scared. And when I heard the schools closed, I felt overwhelmed. And finally, when I heard that there was no toilet paper to be found anywhere, that worried me a bit too. I probably have enough toilet paper to last at least a month, I think.

On Friday, after I heard all of this I went to my kitchen, leaned up against my sink and decided to watch the birds in our backyard. Since we’ve had so much rain this year, our backyard has become overgrown. It looks like a jungle out there. For birds, it’s a smorgasbord of food.

Standing there watching the birds, I remembered the verse.

“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Matt. 6:26

The birds I watched didn’t seem to have a care in the world. I saw two unusual birds; they had a bright red head and neck. They flew down to peck at the vast jungle, eating bugs I’m sure. Several brown birds came and joined the red heads. A dove showed up, but he just sat on the fence, just looking around. None of these birds were worried about the corona virus. None of them seemed the least bit worried about anything. They just flitted around pecking at the green plants in our back yard.

The next day there was a lot of puddles from the rain all night. I was near a sidewalk, where a puddle had formed. A small brown bird came and splashed down into the puddle. He was taking a bath. He sloshed around in the puddle with his wings. After he’d washed himself thoroughly, he flew away.

Look at the birds! God takes care of the birds, how much more will he care for us? God is still on His throne. He knows all about the corona virus. He knows all about our shortage of toilet paper. He tells us not to panic. We should never panic.

There is one thing you should worry about. It’s what will happen to you when you die. We are all going to die at some point. I like that phrase, “Nobody gets out of here alive!” That’s so true. And what happens to people when we die? Well, we all go to one of two places: heaven or hell. Not everyone goes to heaven. You get to heaven by one way and that is accepting Jesus Christ as your Savior. Jesus Christ died on a cross some two thousand years ago. He was punished on that cross for our sins. All of our sins. Everybody’s sins since the beginning of time. And all one needs to be saved is to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior. Believe that He took the punishment for your sins.

If you haven’t done that yet, do it now. Just pray to God. Where you go after you die is what people should be worried about. Because that is an eternity. The corona virus will soon be a thing of the past. Your eternity is not.

How do you see the world? Do you look at God’s creation as He tells us, it is? Or, do you look at the world, with some lies mixed in?

I just watched a video of Jeffrey Dahmer. I know, why was I watching a video of Jeffrey Dahmer? I had heard that he accepted the Lord just before he was killed. I wanted to find out if that was true.

In the video, he sits with his dad and is being interviewed in jail. The interviewer poses to Jeffrey, reasons why he did what he did. Was it the medication his mom was on when she was pregnant with him? Was it the violent arguments his parents had in front of him? Jeffrey denies all of these. He simply says he didn’t feel accountable to anybody for his actions.

His dad turns to him and asks Jeffrey when did he feel accountable. Jeffrey responds to his dad and tells him it was when he had given him the creation science literature. He says he always believed the lie that evolution was truth. The lie that we all came from slime and when we die we become nothing. Jeffrey says the whole theory of evolution “cheapens life.” He said, “The Lord Jesus Christ is the true creator of the heavens and the earth.” He then said, “I have accepted Him as my Lord and Savior.”

Jeffrey Dahmer had accepted Jesus Christ as His Savior? Wow! One of the most prolific serial killers. And he claims his viewpoint, through the lens of evolution, cheapened life. That makes sense. If you believe that we came from slime and return to slime when we die, how could life be valuable in our eyes? It would all appear to be pointless. Why not go do whatever it is you want to do? We aren’t accountable.

But we are accountable. The world didn’t come into existence by evolution. The Lord Jesus Christ created it. He sits on His throne now. He will return to the earth and bring judgement on it. These are truths. We are accountable.

But we must look at the world through the lens of God’s viewpoint. In the Bible, God tells us that He created the world. He says He did it in six days. You would have to add to scripture or take away from scripture to make anything other than that.

The enemy is out there creating lies upon lies about everything God has done. He wants us to not believe the truth. Don’t believe the lies. Look to God’s word and see what God says about it all. When we believe that God created the heavens and the earth, we we see the beauty of the world and the people in it. People become valuable. Abortion becomes murder. Believe the truth.

There is an excellent organization called Answers in Genesis. You can go on their website https://answersingenesis.org.

God means what He says. I know that sounds trivial, but it’s true. He really does mean what He says.

My son learned this the hard way. He’s not like me. If the Bible says something, I generally obey. I don’t like learning things the hard way. But my son…

Over a year ago, my son was in a bad mood. Probably not enough sleep. He had just finished one of his first college swim meets. He swam all day on Saturday. He came home, exhausted, and fell into bed. Everything seemed okay. The next day was Sunday and we all went to church in the morning. When we got home, my son had an attitude. He started yelling at me and was very disrespectful. I told him he needed to apologize and he gave me, what I thought, was a flippant apology. He went to take another nap. I was hurt by him, but my son didn’t know that. But God did. God knew my hurt. God also keeps His word.

“Honor your father and mother…so that it may be well with you…” Ephesians 6:2-3

After a really long nap my son woke up and called for me. He wanted me to see his knee which had swelled up to over 3 times its normal size. It looked like a balloon swelled up underneath his skin. I asked him if he hurt it in the meet, but he left the meet perfectly fine. I asked him if he had hurt it running. He had gone for a run just before his nap. Nope. I told him to ice it and we’ll go to the doctor if it’s still swollen.

He woke up the next morning with his knee still swollen. It was crazy how swollen it was, with no reason for it. He hadn’t injured it so what was going on?

We went to the doctor and the doctor told us the same drill we were doing. He needed to ice it and keep it easy. She said he probably overworked it. We did that, but the swelling wouldn’t go down. Every time he walked, it would swell up and hurt. My son was getting frustrated because he couldn’t swim with his knee so fat and swollen.

We went to an orthopedic doctor. There was nothing on his X-rays. When talking to the doctor, my son could not think of a time where he could have injured his knee. The doctor thought it was strange. He ordered an MRI and referred us to an orthopedic surgeon to get a consultation. They might have to do an arthroscopic surgery to see what he may have done. He may have a slight tear in his meniscus in his knee.

Inside of me, I secretly knew why my son’s knee swelled up. It literally happened right after my son mouthed off to me. God means what He says. If you can’t do what God says, He’ll discipline you.

I mentioned to my son that his knee swelled up right after he spoke to me in a disrespectful way. He apologized, which felt sincere at this time.

We went to the orthopedic surgeon who just so happened to have an opening in 4 days. Normally it would take up to 3 months to schedule a surgery. That would be my son’s whole swim season. We accepted the date, convinced he had torn a meniscus. Though the MRI and the X-rays showed nothing.

We took my son to his surgery convinced he had torn his meniscus. The surgery was quick and the doctor came out to tell us how it went. It wasn’t a torn meniscus. It was plica. Plica? What in the world is plica? Well it’s a thick cartilage like membrane that most people lose at the time of their birth. Some people retain their plica. According to the doctor, my son’s plica was impressive. It was huge and acted like a thick rope, sawing on my son’s knee cap and creating the swelling and causing his knee cap to hurt. The surgeon cut it all out and my son should recover with no side effects.

We brought my son home and sat him on the couch while his knee was elevated. He had ice packs on it and wasn’t supposed to move. I explained to him the plica. I told him it wasn’t supposed to be there, but it was. I looked at him and said, “You know why this happened, don’t you?” He nodded. He knew why now.

God means what He says.