Trinity Baptist Church

In spite of all the “how to” books, helps, and seminars that tell us how to achieve the desired results in churches, church is not at all what it used to be.  In some ways, it is perhaps better.  We’ve surely got more resources and opportunities than ever before, but still, there is a missing element.

In Revelation 3:20, Jesus is outside knocking on the door of the church of Laodicea.  In their lukewarmness, they were going right on with their church doings, and Jesus wasn’t in their midst.  Is that the case in all too many churches today?

The invitational hymn, “Just As I Am,” holds forth the truth that we come to Jesus simply trusting Him to empower us to make the changes that would be pleasing to Him, but it may be that some people have the mentality that the Lord is satisfied with us just as we are.

We need a sin-killing revival that would turn people’s hearts back to God.  We need a revival of old-fashioned holiness.

We all have dreams and plans, along with a general idea of how we think things ought to go in our life.  We all know that there are times when life takes a different turn than we had hoped.  We may see our retirement account melting away under the current adverse market, we may find our job being dissolved, when we are past the age of easy job finding, or we may get a jolting diagnosis from the doctor, just when we thought we were beginning to get control of some things.  On and on the list could go, but the truth is, there are times when we face great disappointment.

First, to rebound from disappointment, we must accept completely that God knows and cares about our situation.  He did not cause adversity in our life.  Jesus came to give us life, and that more abundantly.  It is the devil, who is the thief who has come to steal, kill, and destroy.  We live in a sin-cursed world, and bad things do happen.  It may very well be that we have made some bad choices, and the adversity in our life has come as a result of those choices.  I remember one man who was in the hospital with lung cancer, after a lifetime of smoking, and he looked at me and said, “I know the Lord will not put more on you than you can stand.”  Well, the Lord did not put that on him.  He put it on himself by direct disobedience to the teachings of God’s word, concerning how we are to care for our physical bodies.  Yet, in spite of bad doings, God is good, and His mercy endures forever.  Even when we have done it to ourselves, God loves us and can be touched with the feelings of our infirmities.

We also need to understand that God’s blessing is attained by meditating on the word of God, the Bible.  We must know it before we can meditate on it, but most people know enough to meditate on.  To be blessed is to be inwardly happy.  Not a superficial happiness, but a deep knowledge that everything is alright, because God is in control.  To be blessed is the God-given ability to live in the exceeding great and precious promises of God.  Disappointment melts quickly away in the light of the promises of God.

Practically every church has experienced times when the atmosphere was not exactly “the spirit of unity in the bond of peace,” as Ephesians 4:3 says.

No doubt, there are times that the absence of peace is due to a “church bully,” either in the pulpit, or in the pew.  We need to understand that God’s way of becoming great is to be a servant, and that each of us are to esteem the other better than ourselves.  We are to be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us. 

Since it is really not possible to change someone else, church unity must start with us, as an individual.  This doesn’t mean to always step back and give a church troublemaker an open road to do things that the majority of the church is not in favor of doing, but it means we would do well to check our attitudes concerning how we respond to these matters.  There are proper procedures to which we would be wise to adhere.  Let all things be done decently and in order.

Better communication is often the needed ticket to a more peaceful church situation.

One thing is for sure: if there is any place in this world where people ought to love each other, it’s church.

Could anything be better than perfect peace and still be living at the same time?  Perfect peace would mean that you have no aggravating conflicts, no worries, fears, doubts, or any such thing.  Is it possible?  Isaiah 26:3 holds forth a promise to those who will receive it, saying, “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon You, because he trusts in You.”

In order to have your mind stayed upon God, you must make a decision to free your mind from the necessary clutter.  You may not know everything that is going on in Washington, you may not know all the sports statistics, and you may not know who’s who on American Idol, but you know something of God’s word, because you have deliberately put your mind there.  When you are in your car, choose a radio station where the music and talk is about God, or maybe spend that drive time praying (with your eyes open.)  Meditate on God’s word.  Let your mind just keep going back to a particular verse or passage.  Purposefully think about how good God has been to you, and give Him praise and thanks.

The verse also says, “Because he trusts in You.”  To have perfect peace, you must completely trust what God has said.  It is things like relationships, health, and money that the devil most often uses to steal, kill, and, destroy your peace, but God has said things about all of those areas of life.  God has done everything necessary for you to have perfect peace.  Keep your mind stayed upon Him, and trust Him completely, and it is yours.

Genesis 1:27 tells us that we are created by God, we are created in the image of God, and that both males and females are equally created in the image of God.  One thing that we can safely conclude from this is that God places a high value on human life, since no other creatures were said to be created in His image.

The subject of sanctity of human life has two book-ends, one being the preborn, and the other being the elderly, and those who are apparently at the end of their life.

More than 55 million preborns have been killed in America since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973, and almost all of them because people thought that allowing them to live was too embarrassing, too expensive, or too inconvenient.  Proverbs 6 gives a listing of things that God hates, and high on the list is hands that shed innocent blood.  What blood could be more innocent than the preborn?

Where are we going in America in regard to how we treat people at the end of their life?  Will the government decide when to “pull the plug”?  Will the elderly have access to aggressive medical treatments that are not considered “cost effective?”  This is a much bigger issue than just democrat or republican.  It has been coming for quite a while.  It is the result of a couple of generations of selfish whiners, who have been given everything they wanted before they had time to want it, and now they think the world owes them, and the government is the paymaster.

When a loved one is at the point of death, and the doctor says recovery is very unlikely, decisions have to be made.  There are, however, some things that can be done to ease the burden.

Encourage your loved ones to draft a living will, indicating what they want done in extreme end of life circumstances.

Make sure that you value the sanctity of life over the quality of life.  Quality of life is a very subjective determination. 

Make sure you exhaust every option for life.  High risk surgery is worth the risk.  When the odds are 98% against success, they are 2% for success. 

If there is a decision to not resuscitate or to withhold certain treatments, make sure you have gotten as much information from the doctors as possible, and that family members are in agreement.  Make sure you feel confident that you can stand before the Lord at the judgment and say, “I did the best thing I knew to do.”