The Small Branch

  I live in the woods.   There is a ring of grass around my house and then woods, including lots of weeds.   There are cacti around, which seems odd based on the climate and makes me wonder if someone dumped them out at one time.   There are also some weeds that have weird silvery leaves with spikes on the edges.   Today, I looked out of my window and one of the cacti has a beautiful yellow flower on top.   The spiky weed just a few feet away has a lovely purple bloom.   Isn’t it amazing how something so harsh, even painful, can have beauty come from it?   I am reading a book of Charles Spurgeon’s sermons from the book of Job (I’ll get to a book review on it when I finish).  Job suffered a lot and not because of anything he did or didn’t do.  Sometimes life is just hard.  Sometimes, God allows us to suffer so that we will have all the extra and unnecessary stuff stripped away and He can bless us with better.   That’s wh...

  This morning I was reading in Luke chapter 7, about Simon the Pharisee and the “sinful woman” and it hit me.   I have been struggling with pride my whole life, most of us do, I guess, but the last year or so it has been more and more obvious to me.   Have you ever noticed how much more we see our sin as we get to know the Father better?   Anyway, it hit me that I am, in many ways, a Pharisee.   I often think that my idea of how things should be is actually the way things should be.   As I was answering the questions in my study book, it became clear.   Simon was looking at the outside of a person, only her past actions, her clothes, her situation, etc.   How many times do I do that?   I was raised in a Christian home, but it was also clear that being a “successful, upper middle class American” was equally important and people were definitely judged by that standard.   I have worked in a private Christian school where students were ma...

  I’m sure you’ve noticed the great divide in our country.   Culturally, and therefore politically, things seem to be spreading farther and farther apart.   I was thinking about this recently, especially while listening to The Briefing with Albert Mohler .   With a lot of political issues in the past, people have worked hard to come up with a bipartisan compromise.   Things like the budget and national debt, military presence and procedures, etc. have worked with compromises on both sides.   Why aren’t they doing that now?   Because there is no way to compromise on these issues.   Here are some examples: I believe that there are two genders, male and female, assigned at conception by the DNA God gives us.  If someone else wants to tell me that gender is something you can change or choose for yourself, I’m just going to tell them that they are wrong.  There is no room for compromise in either of our viewpoints.   Abortion is...

  Dealing with our sin is an important part of our walk with Christ.   We start the journey by repentance, because of the faith He has given us (there are many who debate which comes first, faith or repentance, and I’m not really qualified to join that debate other than to recommend, again, The Doctrine of Repentance by Thomas Watson).   We continue the journey by repenting as sin in our lives is revealed to us.   Today, though, I’m not really addressing dealing with our own sin.   Today, I have a lot of questions about dealing with other people’s sin. We all know that the sins of others can affect us, sometimes in very detrimental ways.  Sometimes, we are directly hurt by their sin, whether  physically, like with a drunk driver causing an accident, or emotionally, like with an adult child who chooses rebellion rather than obedience to the Lord.  Sin also has affected creation and means that we have natural disasters like hurricanes, floods,...

 In John 5, Jesus encounters a man who has been sick for 38 years lying near the pool of Bethesda.  We are told that, when an angel of the Lord stirred the waters, the first one into the pool was healed.  The man had been there 38 years, though.  In verse 6 we are told, "When Jesus saw him lying there, and knew that he had already been a long time in that condition, He said to him, "Do you wish to get well?""  This seems like an odd question.  When we are sick, of course we want to get well.  Or do we?  It is amazing how much we wallow in our sicknesses, whether sickness of the body, mind, or spirit.  Sometimes, when I have a headache, my husband will say to me, "did you take anything?"  In my stubbornness, the answer is often "no."  I don't want to take the medicine that I know will make my head stop hurting.  It seems silly, but that is what happens.  Here Jesus gets to the heart of the matter for many of us.  Do we...

 Jesus appeared to many after His resurrection.  Two of those were disciples who were walking from Jerusalem to Emmaus.  When Jesus approached them, they didn't know who He was, but they had plenty to tell Him.  They were amazed that this "stranger" didn't know about what had been going on in Jerusalem.  As they told Him about Jesus, they said, "But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel"  (Luke 24:21a).  They wanted Israel to be redeemed.  What does that mean?  The dictionary defines redeem as "to save someone from sin, error, or evil."    I think this is what the men meant.  They wanted Israel to be saved from the big bad Romans who were making their lives difficult.  But another definition from the dictionary is "to gain or regain possession of something in exchange for payment, to pay the necessary money to clear a debt."  The Greek word for redeem means "to ransom."  While the word rede...

 Have you ever used whitewash?  I haven't, but a lot of the books I read mention it (remember Tom Sawyer ?).  Basically, it's paint.  Paint makes things look pretty and new.  But have you ever painted over something only to later realize that you shouldn't have?  Take mildew.  If you paint over mildew without first scrubbing it out and killing it all, it will just grow back.  The paint doesn't fix the problem.  Paint is just a temporary cover up.  Our lives are like that.  If we think we will be better by looking better on the outside, we soon find that it is only a temporary cover up for a heart problem that needs to be fixed.   Matthew 23:25-28 says: 25  “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.   26  You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the ou...

 Sometimes, I wish I could just be with Jesus, hanging out at church, doing "Jesus things" with no complications.  But we have a bigger mission than that. In Luke, chapter 8, we are told of a man possessed by a legion of demons.  His life is no life at all.  Jesus crosses the lake to heal him.  He drives the demons from him and makes him well, whole, in his right mind.  The reaction of the crowd is interesting.  In verse 37, we are told, "Then all the people of the country of the Gerasenes and the surrounding district asked Him to leave them, because they were overwhelmed with fear."  These people had just seen the man formerly acting as a wild animal in his right mind, and all they could do was cower in fear.  They sent the One who casts out fear away.  The man's response is much different.  "But the man from whom the demons had gone out kept begging Him, pleading to go with Him;" verse 38 tells us.  This man desperately wants...

 In Mark 5:1-20, the account is given of a demoniac man who is healed by Jesus.  This man dwelt among the tombs and the people tried unsuccessfully to bind him with chains (v. 3).  They wanted this man far away from them because he screamed all night and cut himself relentlessly (v. 5).  Jesus, on the other hand, went to him and healed him.  We are told just before this that Jesus and His disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee and found the man as soon as they got out of the boat (v. 2).  After Jesus heals the man, He then crosses over the sea again (v. 21).  This implies that the whole reason for the trip was to heal this man.  This man that others tried to chain and cast out, Jesus made a special trip to free and bring in.   And what happens as a result?  Well, the people of the area beg Jesus to leave because they were afraid (vv. 15-17).  The man who was healed begs to go with Jesus, but He doesn't let him.  Instead, Je...

 Matthew 26:39 says "And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying "My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will."   Here, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane just before He is arrested, begging God for another way, but only if God wills it.  In my younger years of faith, I thought to myself, "Well sure, He is terrified of the pain and agony He will have to go through.  He is fully human and so will suffer so much pain from the torture He must endure.  Of course He wants to avoid that pain!"  But as I have grown, I really think that it not it at all.  Later, in Matthew 27:46, we read "About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Eli, Eli, Lama sabachthani?" that is "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?""  This, my friends, must be the greatest terror ever known to mankind.  Jesus had all the sins of the world, for all time, laid on ...

     We are doing a study called Job: A Story of Unlikely Joy  by Lisa Harper (Lifeway Press 2018) in our Bible study at church.  Job is a book about suffering.  It tells us that the "health and wealth" gospel has been around for a long time and was just as much a lie then as it is now.  This week, we have been looking at "wound care" using Elihu's discourses from chapters 32-37.      I have been struggling with one main thing this week - what is suffering?  Job suffered the loss of his children, his wealth, and his health, not even to mention the loss of respect and friendship that seems to go along with those.  His were huge, obvious sufferings.  Lisa Harper mentions some huge, obvious traumas in her life as she discusses these sufferings.  But what if we haven't had the huge, obvious sufferings?  Personally, I think I have lived a pretty charmed life.  I was never abused in any way.  My parents love...