Time Out

She said that recently she would find the little one sitting in the ‘time out spot’ when she hadn’t done anything wrong. Momz, of course, asked her why she was sitting there to which she replied simply that she was in time out.

When mommy asked why she was in time out the little girl replied that she was “storing it up” for a time when she really was bad so that she wouldn’t have to sit there as long then.

Both of the students cooed about how cute it was and all that, and I have to admit that it brought at smile to my face as well. On my way out to the car however, I thought about how typical this child’s actions were of humanity as a whole.

There is this strange, willful idea that we need to somehow “balance” the wrongs we do either with good works or some type of penance. This type of thinking was always very strong in the Catholic Church (and still is to this day in many less westernized countries) but it is also found in almost all religions around the world.

People hope that they can do “things” that will either cover their past wrongdoings or “bank up” for those that will be done in the future.

This type of thinking is in direct contrast to The Truth that is taught in The Bible. God’s Word teaches that we can never “bank” up righteousness for ourselves.

The Holy Bible actually says in Isaiah 64:6-7, “But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee: for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities.”

If you get any in-depth study on this whole concept of righteousness being as filthy rags you’ll find that the word picture being presented in the original language does not wrap the concept of “filthy rags” as most of us think about it. We think of that and we conjure up images of a kitchen dish cloth that has been used too long and needs to be washed, or a garage rag that gets blackened up as we work on a car.

These in and of themselves would be pretty bad, but the concept being communicated is that of menstral rags. Whenever we start thinking in and of ourselves of the good things that we want to “bank up” for the future, these very “good deeds” are so tainted with sin that God looks at them as if we were trying to offer him filth-soaked menstrual rags!

Now that you know that, go back and read those two verses again. Changes the meaning a bit and makes it more drastic, doesn’t it?

The Atonement of The Cross

I came up with this concept while working on computers, especially the older ones that were more prone to freezing up. A lot of people would leave their computers on indefinitely. Even today I know of people that still do. Over time, it seemed that as the computer was used more and more that the different programs would just leave behind “junk” in the system memory or something.

While I am a bit of an “internet guy”, I would say that I was never really a “computer guy” so I can’t really say with any authority what was going on behind the scenes. All I know is that over time the computer would just get gummed up and would work much more slowly with no apparent reason. The only thing to do to fix this problem was to reboot the machine at which time it would miraculously be freed of all its sluggishness.

Some time after this I came up with the idea that there are actually “reset days”. It just seemed that some days were doomed to be “bad days” for one reason or another. That the majority of the events that transpired over the course of these types of days would either be unusually stressful or outright bad. The reset day would end once you went to bed and woke up on a new day. Rarely did I notice that I came across to reset days in a row, so if I felt that I was caught up in one I would look forward to the end of the day in a big way. I’ve never had a “reset week” either.

I also came up with the idea that no matter what you did or how you prayed it didn’t really matter because you pulled a “reset day” card and you just had to endure. You can see how this entire thing just doesn’t really mesh well with what God says about this type of thing in his Word.

Usually, I could identify a “reset day” pretty early on, which meant that whenever anything bad would happen I would say, “Yup, there’s another one…I knew it was a reset day.” I even dragged my wife into this type of thinking. She’s told me before that she was having a reset day.

If you think about it, this entire concept of the “reset day” is either dishonoring to God or completely defeatist in nature….or both.

The Bible says in Psalm 118:24 “This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.”

Now if I’m running around thinking that I got dished up a “bad day” then I’m completely denying the truth of this passage. Also, any day that we are walking with The Lord should be acknowledged as a “great day”…if I feel that the day is so crappy that I need to rush through it to get to the end I’m contradicting with my life what I say I believe with my mouth.

The other possibility (worse even than the previous concept) is that God has singled me out for meaningless persecution for the day and that He has lined everything up in such a way that it all goes wrong at the same time. How rediculous. Then you extend the false idea by twisting Romans 8:28 which says “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” by saying to yourself that God is just letting himself off the hook for throwing me through the ringer because it’s, of course, “all for my good”.

I think it’s important to see how small, personal “philosophies” like this can take hold in anyone’s life and lead to a terrible end. Namely, the dishonoring and misrepresentation of The Lord.

The truth is that all things DO work together for the ultimate good of those who love The Lord. Each and every day really IS good and we SHOULD rejoice in it. If I start harboring throughts and attitudes such as this then what I’m doing is telling God that I don’t believe that He is who He says He is! I’m saying he’s a mean old man who’s fickle and sadistic and never was able to mature to a level where He no longer gets his jollies out of burning the homosapien ants of this world with his cosmic magnifying glass.

Such thoughts not only do not bring honor to The Lord, but they actually do the opposite and dishonor him. It really makes me wonder how many other, seemingly harmless, attitudes I’ve been building up over the years.

I’d like to wrap this up on a positive note that proves that there are no such thing as “reset days” except in our own minds. My wife told me that her mother called all excited today. My in-laws have been on vacation in FL and they have been witnessing someone in the condo next to them for the past week or so that they’ve been there. Today they preached the word from The Bible, asked him if he would accept the Lord Jesus Christ as his savior, and he said he did. He prayed for mercy, forgiveness, and grace, and today was born again into the family of God Himself. The work of The Lord in salvation is active in every so-called “bad day”.

The next time it seems like you are having a day that is so bad that it’s just a “reset day” remember that on that very day God is not just saving one or two people, but HUNDREDS of people each and every day are being saved by His grace. Ask The Lord to give you a gratefulness for what he is doing in OTHER people’s lives…even if it doesn’t seem like much good is showing up in your own. Ask Him to strengthen your faith and give you a clear understanding of His goodness so that you won’t harbor false ideas about His person. And finally, ask Him to empower you to fulfill your ultimate purpose so that you can glorify Him.

As I have said before, after years of negligence The Lord decided to draw me back to a close relationship with him. The very first area that was highlighted change under the spotlight of the Holy Spirit was my lack of discipline in regards to Bible study.

I decided to approach my time in the Word using the John MacArthur Bible Study Method of reading the same section of scripture repetitiously each day for a month. His point seemed valid when he said, “I trust you’re going to read your Bible every day for the next two and a half years anyway, so you might as well come out on the other side knowing what’s in it.”

Being that my schedule, as is the case with most people, is stuffed full I quickly realized that I needed to start getting up at a significantly earlier hour in the day. There just was no getting around it. The day is overloaded, I have three kids so there’s not a moments peace in the house when I’m home, and by 8 o’clock when I sit down on the couch after putting kids to bed it’s a 50/50 chance that I’m going to pass out.

Also, I remember hearing preachers at difference Christian events talking about how God needs to be “first” in your life and your day and that the first stop in the morning after the bathroom needs to be to sit down and engross yourself in The Word. Seemed to make sense to me.

At the same time I was getting up earlier to do at least 30-40 minutes of yoga each day to stimulate the body give me some low-impact strength training. So I was getting up double-early.

I quickly learned that the “first thing in the morning” approach wasn’t going to work well. I was so groggy in the morning that the words on the page would fuzz in and out as I read. I would have to read entire chapters over more than once. A through reoccurred to me that somewhere I had heard that you should read the Holy Bible aloud during your time with God, so I even started doing that…but it didn’t work.

Further research unearthed the idea that you should be giving God your “best time” of the day, whatever that may be. Initially I thought that this was a cop-out for people that want to say that 8 pm was the best time of the day and then they never actually do their Bible reading because of distraction or fatigue but a quick review of my own situation showed that there might be some truth to the concept.

See, I would do my Bible study first and then my yoga second. However, when I thought about it, I was always much more alert, sharp, and awake immediately after my mini-yoga session. It stood out then that this time immediately after my yoga session was my “best” time of the day. So I switched up my early morning schedule to do the yoga first, take a quick shower, make some tea and then sit down awake and refreshed for my quite time with The Lord. It usually works our that I have about 1 hour to 1 hour 15 minutes before my kids wake up, so I’m distraction free as well.

This worked wonders. Those first three days were tough with the schedule wrong, but now I thought everything would be smooth sailing from then on out.

WRONG!

About day 20 I ran into another “wall” when reading. The problem seemed to be that my mind was drifting CONSIDERABLY while I was reading God’s Word! Not necessarily to “evil” things, but just “stuff” that had nothing to do with whatever I was reading. My mind had somehow developed a wayward heart. I was getting to bed earlier, I was drinking a full 26 oz of water first while letting the dogs out, had taken my vitamin C, taken my vitamin D, was doing yoga and getting the blood flowing, took a quick shower so I was feeling clean and good…all this before I set down at the kitchen table. Oh, and I was praying before studying and I always was asking God to keep my mind sharp on His Word as I read it. All this to no avail.

The only thing I could determined would be the case for this unexplained breakdown of discipline in my Bible study time was that over 20 days I had become rather familiar with the passage to the point where I could “read” the words aloud while thinking of something completely different. Then an idea stuck me.

Super Bible Study

This worked like gang-busters!

I soon discovered that not only were all of John MacArthur’s sermons and messages available for free download on his website, but numerous others were as well. I started downloading these and loading them up on my iPod. On the way to school and work I would listen to these messages, while on my lunch break I would listen, while walking around during my day I would listen. Each day everything I read began to be far, FAR more interesting. It was like my Bible became richer and fuller overnight. Amazing.

I’m going to publish my Top 10 Super Bible Study tips over the next few days. You can find them here:

Never the less, I’m going to continue on the intended path. I’m tempted to “bear down” right now and spend the next six months just studying this power-packed book. Of course, there are only so many hours in the day and such a course would mean that I would have to sacrifice the study of other books in order to focus on this one. Since that’s not the general idea for this pattern of bible study, I’m going to stick to the original plan.

Here is the quick study outline that can be used to memorize the major themes of this set of chapters:

Here are some links to the Super Study resources to take your learning a bit further:

As is typical, I’ll be adding insights I’ve gleaned from my personal Bible study time in this section of scripture in the comments section below. If you want to add your own thoughts or comments, feel free to do so and I’ll make sure they show up asap.

This first chapter of Proverbs is broken down into three main sections:

Section 1 (verses 1-9): the call of Solomon to his sons to listen to the words of his wise father and to gain wisdom through the fear of The Lord.

Section 2 (verses 10-19): the writer admonishes us to avoid throwing in with the wicked who look to devise plans to use craftiness or violence to take advantage of others in order to satisfy their greedy desire for gain.

Section 3 (verses 20-33): a word picture is provided of a Wisdom in the form of a woman crying in the streets for any who would listen to heed her call in order to avoid destruction and calamity.

I decided to add reading one of the Psalms each day to my bible study time last Saturday. The next morning our Pastor preached out of this passage, which had never stuck out at me before. It’s an amazing passage.

The passage starts out with praise to the Lord for his awesome and eternal nature nature, moves through a sense of despondency about the struggle of life, a call to number our days so we can seek to do right and ends at the focal point with a plea to The Lord to give us our proper work and then to establish that work of our hands as well once it’s given.

The passage is powerful and ends full of hope. Hope happens to be something I really want more of and is one of the reasons why I’ve added Psalms to my daily bible study.

Quick Study Outline of this section of scripture for memorization:

Romans 1: Not ashamed of the gospel. God is revealed through nature, but men reject God and become more and more sinful.

Romans 2: God will pass out judgment and rewards one day. Gentiles have the law written on their hearts. True circumcision is of the heart.

Romans 3: All men are sinners, none are righteous. Man is justified by faith in the blood of Jesus without works.

Romans 4: Abraham was saved by faith…believers are saved by faith as well.

Romans 5: Results of justification by faith. Adam brought death to many, Christ brings life to many.

Romans 6: Believers are dead to sin and raised as servants of righteousness.

Romans 7: Married to Christ. The temporary Christian struggle with sin.

In the comments section below I’ll be sharing some of the insights The Lord gives to me as I work through this passage of scripture during my morning Bible study time. Feel free to add to the conversation as to your own insights as your read through the passages each day yourself.

Our world seems, indeed, to be a strange place where things of Faith are concerned. As I have recently returned to school, I’ve come across a lot of various viewpoints that I had not previously encountered before. I think much of that has to do with one class in particular that I was able to take which was more free-form and less focused. Debate was encouraged, and extra credit assignments were even assigned which matched people of different viewpoints and persuasions to discuss issues of religion and society.

One of the most enduring things that came acorss to me on one of these projects was the fact that there are people that just don’t care about faith at all. They feel that spiritual things either don’t exist or are of no consequence to us. Others had faith in “nothing”. Some strange etherial force that they’ve conjured up in their own mind. A god of their own devise that fits well into their view o the world. While I don’t believe in evolution, I do belive that the concept of “religion” has evolved over the years. We’re still strapped with it, but it comes dressed in fine new robes these days. Of course, if you look closely, you can still see the trappings of traditional idol worship from centuries past. Despite what people think about how far humanity has come over the last 5,000 years, it appears more likely that the apple did not fall far from the tree.

The beliefs of the world are not the focus of this series of posts, but rather, The Truth as God Himself has revealed it. God’s guidebook for life, the Holy Bible, says it takes faith to believe what God says. The cool thing is that it takes a lot less faith to believe The Truth vs. lies.

Quick Study Outline of this section of scripture for memorization:

Romans 1: Not ashamed of the gospel. God is revealed through nature, but men reject God and become more and more sinful.

Romans 2: God will pass out judgment and rewards one day. Gentiles have the law written on their hearts. True circumcision is of the heart.

Romans 3: All men are sinners, none are righteous. Man is justified by faith in the blood of Jesus without works.

Romans 4: Abraham was saved by faith…believers are saved by faith as well.

Romans 5: Results of justification by faith. Adam brought death to many, Christ brings life to many.

Romans 6: Believers are dead to sin and raised as servants of righteousness.

Romans 7: Married to Christ. The temporary Christian struggle with sin.

In the comments section below I’ll be (more…)

I decided to add reading one of the Psalms each day to my bible study time last Saturday. The next morning our Pastor preached out of this passage, which had never stuck out at me before. It’s an amazing (more…)