My wife likes the TV show by that name.  I don’t.  That aside, what we wear is more important that most people in today’s society like to believe.  One of my favorite websites, “Art of Manliness,” has a feature article about how to dress.  This is written for men, but everyone would profit from reading it, because it makes some excellent points about first impressions, the connection between how one dresses and how he feels, and the connection between dressing and performance.  These are things that we have known for many years, but have come to deny.  I hope you will have time to read the article.

Someone asked Jesus what He thought of paying taxes, and Jesus asked to see a coin.  When a coin was handed to Him, He asked whose picture was on it?  Someone answered, “Caesar.”  Jesus then said, “Render unto Caesar that which is his, and render unto God that which is His.”

It seems like Caesar’s part keeps getting bigger all the time, doesn’t it?  Most of us (middle class and lower middle class) work until late May for Caesar, before we make anything for ourselves.  Those in higher income brackets work longer than that for Caesar.

Could it be that one of the reasons Caesar has become so imposing on us, is because we have failed to render unto God that which is His?

We have freedoms to exercise our religious faith that we have long taken for granted.  It is not so in other parts of the world.  A great window of opportunity has been opened to us to get the gospel out without governmental opposition, but it could be a closing window. 

Someone said that we should live today, as if we knew we were going to die tomorrow.  I recently heard the testimony of a man whose doctors have repeatedly told him that he has a condition that could cause him to fall dead at any minute.  He talked about, “Living like you’re dying.”

Here is the fact:  we are dying!  Some of us are doing it faster than others, but we are all doing it.  We have an appointment for it, and though we may miss many of our appointments, not one person will miss this one.  What if you knew it were going to be tomorrow?  What would you do today?

We now have a new president elect.  It is not pupose to be political, but merely to consider some of the political ramifications for churches and individual Christians.

The truth is, we don’t know what President Elect Barak Obama will do.  One might argue that you never know what any candidate is going to do, and there’s some truth to that; however, the best indicator of the future we have, in the case of any individual, is what he has done in the past.  For the most part, we don’t know anything about this person’s past.  Even CNN said that he is the least known person ever to be elected president.

We know we can expect bigger government.  What we don’t know is what the attitude of this administration will be toward the evangelical church.  Will we lose our tax-exempt status for saying homosexuality is a wicked sin, or that abortion is the murder of unborn babies?  Or worse yet, will Bible preaching pastors be arrested?

When it comes to saying that we deserve any favor from God, we don’t have a leg to stand on, but it surely is a time to make 2 Chronicles 7:14 a reality in our lives.

We know that God cannot fail, but it is said that more than 80% of churches in America are in a state of decline.  I would suggest that we have become too satisfied and too self-sufficient.  Instead of fasting and praying for the power of God, we develop a program, or worse, copy someone else’s program that we think has worked from them.  In John 15:5, Jesus said, “Without Me, you can do nothing,” but we have, for the most part, reversed that idea to say that “Without us, God can do nothing.”  We have become our greatest hinderance in the business of bringing people to Christ.