What Should I Do Starting Today?

If I'm going to have a blog to share what I'm pondering about, I really should post to it more often. So one of the things I should do starting today is to take time to write down what I'm thinking about. Doing so may help me determine what's important for me to do and then do it.

In some respects I've had a difficult year. A heart attack and colon cancer along with months in the hospital took up much of my time, thoughts, and emotions. When I was in the hospital I didn't even get to see or spend much time with my wife, which was hard on both of us since we are still very much in love after ten years of marriage.

 I have regained some of my strength. I don't have to be on my ventilator all the time. Some days are better than others in that regard.

For many years I enjoyed earning money as an independent AVON representative. But that involved going around town in my wheelchair to deliver catalogs and then the orders when they came in. Doing that is out of the question any more. Sales had slowed down considerably even before I got sick, so I'd already decided to forgo selling AVON the way I had been, since the cost of catalogs and other supplies would likely exceed the revenue from sales.

Blogging is something I can do almost any day, regardless of the weather. I have other blogs, and I can post to them as well. I might even be able to place ads and earn a bit from them.

OK, I guess I'll hit the publish button and go read my wife's blog since she just let me know her post today is ready.

Going to Check My Vision Today

Today I'll be going to have my eyesight checked to see if  I need new glasses.

Right now I have two sets of eyeglasses. One for distance and another for reading.

Since I don't drive a car I can usually get by without the distance glasses. I'm able to see well enough as to not drive my electric wheelchair into walls, people, or off curbs as long as I pay attention to what I'm doing.

I can read large print well enough, but small print is a problem. Many years ago I could read the tiny print of a Bible that was small enough to fit into my shirt pocket. Now, if I don't have my reading glasses on the Bible has to have large print in order for me to read it comfortably.

When I don't have my reading glasses on, I sometimes make mistakes when I'm attempting to read something. Since I can't clearly make out individual letters I can think that a given word is another word of similar length with similar letters. That certainly be confusing when trying to understand what has been written.

I want to understand what I read. So I'd better be sure I can actually see the letters and words that are on the page. That's why I'm having my vision checked out today.

Speaking of understanding what I read, I'd also better be sure I understand the meaning of  what I read, especially when I read the Bible.

If I don't correctly understand the directions for getting to get to a destination, such at the eye doctor's office or a historic site my wife and I want to visit in Boston, I may never get to where I want to go.

If I want to get to where God wants me to go I had best be sure I'm understanding the directions He has for me in Scripture. If I don't have that understanding then my "vision" of what is important in life by God's standards may be distorted and I might not even know it.

Today's trip to the eye doctor will be good to check my eyesight vision today. Doing some Bible reading and studying today (and every day) will be good for my spiritual vision.

Are We Ashamed of the Gospel?

Rom 1:16  I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. (NIV)

Are we willing to talk about just about anything with our friends and relatives except the gospel? Even if we acknowledge that we are Christians, do we go beyond just saying that to actually sharing what the gospel actually is? Or are we ashamed of the gospel?

We certainly should be ashamed of anything sinful in our lives. But we should never be ashamed of the gospel. After all, the gospel is the good news about who Jesus is and what He has done.

Apart from Jesus there is no salvation. There is no other means by which anyone can be saved from the consequences of sin. Nobody can save himself or herself. We've all done things "our way" rather than God's way. We all act as though we know better than God about how we should live.

We all are in desperate need of the good news that Jesus is God incarnate and the only perfect sinless sacrifice that is acceptable to pay for our sins of action and attitude, including the attitude that our self-determined "goodness" is good enough for a totally holy God.

Anyone who does not come to believe the good news about who Jesus is and what He has done will have an eternity to regret his rejection of Jesus.

We who by God's grace have come to faith in Jesus and the good news about Jesus, should long for others to come to believe and embrace the gospel, too.

We can't force anyone to believe in Jesus and His atoning death and resurrection. But we shouldn't hide the glorious news about Jesus by our failure to talk about Him to others.

Let's pray for one another to never act as though we are ashamed of the gospel of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

Who Wants To Be Holy?

1Pe 1:15-16  But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: "Be holy, because I am holy."  NIV

What does the Bible mean by "holy"? Well, going back to the original languages we find the concepts of pure and also devoted. After that it also developed to convey being separated.

Such meanings show why "holy" is a very suitable word to have associated with God.

We certainly don't understand everything about God, but there are some things we should be able to understand. Since it is not reasonable to think that the universe came from absolutely nothing, then a Creator must have created it.

Therefore God is responsible for our having a universe, and all the matter and energy in it. God is therefore responsible for our existing, and being able to be aware of ourselves, one another, and what is all around us.

I believe God should be appreciated for Creation and for us being part of that Creation.

Furthermore, since we are also able to understand that there is right and wrong, and that there should be consequences for deliberately doing wrong to others, then either that notion came from absolutely nothing and should be totally disregarded by all, or the Creator of the universe also determined that some things are right, and whatever is not what He determined is right is therefore false, or evil.

That Creator, that God, deserves our respect as well as our thanksgiving. Even more than respect, that God deserves our obedience to whatever He makes us to understand about what He wants from us.

The Bible declares that God is holy. In part that means He is pure. So when it came time to express thanksgiving and worship to God, it was essential that whatever was used in that worship also be pure.

When the objects being made for the innermost areas of the tabernacle and Temple were made, they had to be made from pure gold, or covered in pure gold.

When a sacrifice was made before God, the animal had to be free from disease or injury. God is pure, and what is offered to Him must be pure.

In time a sacrifice was made that was far more pure than any spotless lamb or other animal. Jesus, the Lamb of God, was the perfectly pure sacrifice to atone for our sins.

At that that time the curtain before the Holy of Holies in the Temple was torn from top to bottom. Soon thereafter God allowed all the gold instruments of worship and even the priesthood to be removed. Holy objects set apart for use in worshiping God were no longer needed. Even a special separated priesthood was no longer needed for proper worship of God.

But holiness is still needed. God is still holy. We can only come to God with the finished pure sacrifice of Jesus who died on our behalf for our sins. And we can only come to God as the Holy Spirit of God, living in us, enables us to come.

God created us. God provides us with what we need physically. God gives us His Holy Spirit to make His dwelling place, His home, in us.

He does not then ask us, "who wants to be holy?"

He simply tells us. Be holy because I am holy.

To be sure, we need Him to enable us to heed that command. But are we listening?

God is holy. God wants us to be holy. He wants us to be pure. He wants us to be devoted...totally devoted to Him...in all that we do.

What Has Jesus Done For Me Lately?

Col 1:17  He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. NIV

Col 1:17  Before anything was created, he was already there. He holds everything together. NIrV® Copyright © 1996, 1998 by Biblica

The NIV and NIrV both say the same thing. The "He" in each is referring to Jesus, the Son of God, which is shown in the verses that lead up to verse 17.

Notice that in the NIV it does not say He was before all things, it says He is before all things. It is written that way because Jesus made it clear that He has always existed, even before anything was ever created.

In John 8:58-59, when Jesus said that "before Abraham was, I am." the Jewish leaders picked up stones to kill Him because they knew that He was declaring Himself to be God. They weren't able to kill Him at that time because it wasn't yet time for Christ to be put to death for our sins.

The NIrV® translation makes it abundantly clear that Jesus was already here before anything was created. Since He is the Creator then of course He was there. Indeed He is before all things.

Christ not only created everything that was created, He also holds all things together. He is that powerful.

It seems to me that I should be thankful that Christ holds everything together. What if He didn't hold air together? Or water? Where would I be, then?

We owe a lot to Jesus. I want to be ever mindful of being thankful to Him for salvation and for everything that He sustains that make it possible for us all to live and breathe.

Let's think about Him even more than we already have thought about Him. After all, His holding everything together is doing a lot more than we could ever do for ourselves. Thank You, Lord Jesus.

Sometimes We Get Upset

Eph 4:26-27  "In your anger do not sin": Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,  and do not give the devil a foothold. (NIV)

Yesterday my wife and I were somewhat upset with one another. After we were in bed and the lights were out we continued to discuss the matter that was upsetting us. We talked and talked some more. We finally agreed that we couldn't add anything more to the conversation without looking for more information, which have to wait until the next day when we would be able to go online and try to look things up.

There have been times when we stayed awake much longer trying to resolve an issue. But sometimes a resolution seems impossible without additional information that might not be available in the middle of the night. My wife and I are disabled so we can't get up and use our computes at midnight. Or, if an issue needs one or more phone calls to help resolve, most people don't appreciate getting calls in the middle of the night.

So when there are issues that cannot be fully resolved by the end of the day, we still need seek God's help to lay down anger and acknowledge that we still love one another even if our feeling about each other are not all that great at the moment. That's what my wife and I had to do last night so that we could get some sleep.

Today things were somewhat better at times, and other times were even worse. I am, after all, a man and do not always express myself in the best of ways, so I can unintentionally make matters more difficult. But knew we needed more information to help us understand one another. So...we looked.

Of course in due course it was my wife who found the information that helped resolve one issue. And when I followed up on a suggestion of hers to make a phone call to somebody in church, I learned some things that are very hopeful and helpful.

I have a great wife. I don't always understand her or her point of view, which can result in disagreements and varying degrees of being upset, but if we seek to cling to God and pray for His intervention in us to make of this marriage what will glorify Him, then we can get through difficult moments, hours, or even days.

I do have a great wife who help me be a more godly man. But even better than that, we both have a great Lord who can see to it that we can become the married couple and members of His Body, the Church, that He wants us to be.

Because we're imperfect we'll most likely be upset with one another again from time to time. But God can use those times to humble us and teach us things He wants to learn.

So we must not give up. And we must not let our anger or being upset with one another provide a foothold for the devil to harm what God wants to do in our marriage or friendships or in our church.

Deb and I have a wonderful marriage that feels wonderful 99% of the time. We need God to maintain and sustain and build our marriage according to His plans during the 99% of the time it seems wonderful to us, and perhaps even more so during the 1% of the time it doesn't feel so wonderful to us.

Do pray for us, that God be glorified in our lives and in our marriage. We'll pray for you that God be gloried in your marriages and in your lives.

Don't Be Deceived

Col 2:2-4  My purpose is that they may be encouraged in heart and united in love, so that they may have the full riches of complete understanding, in order that they may know the mystery of God, namely, Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I tell you this so that no one may deceive you by fine-sounding arguments.   NIV

Fine sounding arguments deceive many people every day.

Without the correct information, and a proper understanding of that information, anyone can be deceived.

Many people have opinions about Christ. The opinions they have may be casual or strong. They might even think Jesus Christ doesn't even warrant a second thought.

People can feel quite comfortable in what they think about Christ even though they've never take even a few hours to check out what the Bible says about Him. After all, they've heard other people say those stories about Him are fiction. Nobody could have really done those things.

Heal a man born blind? Bring dead persons back to life? Multiply bread and  fish? Walk on water? Resurrect from the dead with a body that could never die again?

There are fine-sounding arguments that Jesus was just an ordinary man and what is written about Him in the Bible is untrue. But before you accept those arguments, ask yourself why Christ's followers were persecuted, tortured and put to death rather than deny what they testified about Jesus and His resurrection.

They weren't put to death simply for a noble cause. They were put to death because they were totally convinced about what they had seen and heard and no fine sounding argument was going to get them to deny what they knew was true.

You need to know who Jesus really is. What you do for the rest of your natural and spiritual life is connected with your relationship with Christ. Don't take this matter lightly. Don't risk being deceived by arguments that may sound quite harmless but in reality may be quite deadly to for all eternity.

Eveything was Created For Jesus

Col 1:16  For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. NIV

This little verse of Scripture is quite direct in what it says. The preceding verses make it clear this is referring to Jesus. Therefore Jesus created everything that was ever created, both physical things and spiritual things.

Furthermore this verse declares that all things were created by Him and for Him.

That could be quite a blow to my ego. Weren't some things created for me?

Well, if in one sense something was created for me it would in a greater sense be to fulfill a purpose that Jesus has for me. After all, both I and the "something" were created by Him and for Him.

Jesus is the Creator and He knows exactly why He made everything in creation. When we give thought to what we do with our possessions we ought to first acknowledge that both we and what we call our possessions actually belong totally to Christ.

When we have the correct perspective of Who owns everything we can turn to Scripture to learn from it what Jesus wants us to do with whatever we have temporary stewardship of.

While He was here in the flesh, Jesus taught that when the master and owner returns He is going to take actions based on what His servants did with what belongs to Him.

It seems to me that a good first step toward properly using what belongs to Jesus is to acknowledge and remember at all times that everything belongs to Him.

Who is this Jesus who created everything for Himself? He is the One who is Creator, Savior, and Lord.

Shouldn't we seek to know Him better? Let's do that.

Can Ads Be A Good Thing?

Yes, I believe that ads can be a good thing. Some ads may be annoying, and get in the way of what we want to read in a magazine or watch during a show on television or at the start of a DVD. But an ad in and of itself is information that should be of interest to at least some people.

For example, if we need to buy groceries, ads in the form or commercials or flyers can let us know what is on sale this week. Ads can actually help us save money.

Of course some ads simply seek to convince us to buy things that we don't need or can't afford. In those situations we need to be cautious and refrain from overspending.

Then there are the ads that can even help us get things for free. Maybe it is a buy 1 get 1 free offer that is promoted. Or sometimes it is a gift card sent to us in the mail for $5 or $10 toward anything in the store, without even a restriction of having to spend a certain amount of money. That piece of mail and the gift card are a form of advertising to get us to come to the store where they hope we will spend some of our own money in addition to what we get with the free gift card.

Some companies now even pay people to look at their ads. They know people can change channels on TV and flip over pages in a magazine to avoid ads, so they offer to pay them a modest amount to view and perhaps rate their advertisements.

Now there is even a company that plans to share its advertising profits with the people who help them get enough members to warrant advertisers to pay to advertise on their website.

Facebook, Twitter, and Google are websites where advertisers spend many millions of dollars because they know their ads will be seen by millions of people. A new company, called Wazzub, is offering to share it's advertising profits with anyone who joins during their pre-launch and helps them get at least 3 other people to join for free.

I joined Wazzub and I am encouraging others to join to see if we can get a share of the advertising profits after they launch on April 9 of this year. Hopefully it will  be an interesting enough site so that people will use it and more people will keep joining in the coming months and years.

Only those of us who join during this pre-launch period will be included in the profit sharing, so I hope many will join before April 9 whether they join from my link or from one belonging to somebody else.

If nothing comes of the Wazzub effort to share their advertising profits, that's OK. They are not asking anybody for any money for membership. So it seems to me to be worth it to give this a try. If you'd like to give see for yourself, you can join Wazzub for free by clicking here.

Doing Something Useful With His Own Hands

Eph 4:28  He who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with his own hands, that he may have something to share with those in need.
      New International Version (NIV)    Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica

   Even though I depend on ventilators all night and a good part of the day, have only partial use of my arms and no practical use of my legs, I still like to try to earn some money to  pay the bills and give to those in need.

   That is why you will find an Amazon Kindle(TM) page on this blog. Once in a while somebody who comes across this blog might check out that page and order something which would earn me a small commission. A little here and a little there can add up.

   I also have been a catalog salesman, since that suited my physical abilities. I could leave catalogs on people's doorsteps in the good weather and people could call me on the phone if they wanted to order something.

  There are those who want millionaires to simply hand over thousands and tens of thousands of dollars to people who don't have as much as they wish they had. I don't usually hear about what the recipients of that money offer to do in in return for the generous "gifts" they demand from the rich folks.

  The passage quoted above says that people who can work at something should work at something. Even though I'm limited in what I can do, I try to find something I can do, even when catalog sales diminish due to the economy and other changing circumstances.

  In this blog from time to time I may share some of the ways I try to earn a bit of extra money. But I will try to only share ideas that will only help people make money, even if just a modest amount, and not risk losing money.

OK, that's all I have time to write today. I need to go read what my wife posted on her blog today.

What Should I Pray For?

Col 1:9  For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.
New International Version (NIV) Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica

The above passage was written by Paul to the Christians in Colosse. I find it interesting that when he tells them that he prays for them, he doesn't say he's praying for their health or financial situation. This passage clearly shows that what mattered most to him concerning the members of that church was their spiritual condition.

I see here that he wasn't just concerned that they be happy, or satisfied with their situation. He wanted them to be filled with knowledge. Not just any knowledge. He wanted them to be filled with the knowledge of the will of God.

He didn't even stop at knowledge, because that could simply mean knowing facts about the will of of God, or what God wanted. Paul also wanted them to have all spiritual wisdom and understanding. Without the latter they would be unable to make proper use of the knowledge.

It seems to me that the substance of this verse would be good for Christians to pray for one another. I ought to also pray it for myself, and if you're a Christian I would suggest that you pray along those lines for yourself.

Where will the knowledge of God's will and the understanding and wisdom come from? Well, reading and studying the Bible on a consistent basis should be the norm for believers. Then getting good teaching from pastors and teachers who believe the Bible is the word of God should also be included in our lives. Of course without the Holy Spirit helping us we won't get much of anything from time spend reading the Bible since the Spirit of God inspired the writing of it.

I want to know God's will and understand what He wants me to do with what I come to understand. That seems like a pretty worthwhile thing to pray about on at least a daily basis.

Please pray for me. I'll seek to do the same for you. I believe that what God wants for us far exceeds what we want for ourselves. Let's pray in this way and see what God does.

What Matters?

Different things matter to different people.

This blog is now going to be about what matters to me. Of course that may sometimes include writing about what matters to other people, because what other people are interested in does matter to me.

Yesterday my wife talked me through the process of getting the Kindle(TM) program onto my computer so I can download books to read.

Reading good books matters to me, so now I'll be able to do that right on my computer.

I also like to earn money so I can pay the bills. That matters to me. So, since I'm an Amazon Associate, I can put a Kindle(TM) page on this blog. I'll try to do that today.

OK, I've got a few things to do right now, so I'll get back to this blog a little later. If you find any of it interesting, please pray for me that I be consistent in keeping up with it.

Have a great day.