There are times in a person's life that you are so confused that (as Ken would say) you don't know if you've found a rope or lost a cow.  I am in one of those times.  My two daughters want me to move to the Edmond area to be close to them, but I've lived in Pryor all my life--except for the Marine Corps years.   My church, my friends, my plumber(!!!) etc. all come when I need them.

The thing I know for sure--at such times as this--is that I want the will of God in my life.  But what is his will???   I need to do something to make it easier for my family to deal with me and my two dogs when I have problems with my arm.  Timing.  Is now the time to move??  I am like every other aging parent out there.  I don't like change.  I don't like change.  I don't like change.

Psalms 143: 10 "Teach me to do your will; for you are my God:  your spirit is good; lead me into the land of uprightness."

I adhere  do the doctrine of "If you are confused or unsure, wait."  

God is never confused or unsure.  We just have to depend on Him.  Or we will end up like Christian in the book "Pilgrim's Progress" and fall into the Slough of Despond.

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1 John 5:11-13 "  These things I have written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God...."

John, the "beloved disciple" is writing to you and me.  He is writing to every believer.  All of the faithful in God.  He wants to say something that will encourage us--and all people down through the ages.  He continues:

"...that you may know that you have eternal life..."  He was speaking as an expert!!  He wanted us to know.  He uses the word "Know" over and over in this short letter.  Even those who were disciples and followers of Jesus had days when they wondered if it was true--would they have eternal life?

Some of the Jewish leaders taught that there was no life after death.  This was a big obstacle for people to rethink.  The idea of eternal life was exhilarating.  It is exhilarating to us as well.  It is our hope.  Of course you want to be sure where you are going to spend that eternal life.

Then, speaking to those of us who believe, John continues the sentence.  "...and that you may believe on the name of the Son of God."

The three parts of the verse are.  1.  He is writing to Christians.   2.  He wants us to know that we have life eternal.  3.  He wants us to believe.

But if you are writing to believers, why would you want to encourage them to believe?  The entire verse seems circular.  But John recognizes that the entire idea of God coming to earth to die for our sins to give us eternal life with Him is almost too good to be true.  He wants to strengthen our faith.

Mark 9:24  "...Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief."

It is unbelievable that God would die for us.  Just because He loves us.  The step from unbelief to belief is faith that God will do what he said he would do.  Give us eternal life.  Thank God.

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I'm afraid to get on the scales.  In addition to all the Christmas cookies, Becky cooked a Prime Rib Roast on Christmas Eve with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings.  That was bad enough, but she makes pies from scratch--real crust.  And she made four of them.  Mince, lemon and two pecans.  I ate pie for breakfast for four days.  When I wasn't eating banana bread.   I'll think about the scales tomorrow.  I can't face it yet.

I had gone to Edmond because my arm is infected again.  Nobody seems to know why it keeps doing this every three months.  It's discouraging.  Six times in eighteen months.

The difference between discouragement and disappointment is that with disappointment, there is the hope that you can get a "do over" and things will turn out differently.  But discouragement is a type of "end of your rope" feeling.  You really don't know what to do.

The only thing that I can think of that is good about all that is that it gives all of us an opportunity to comfort other people who are discouraged.  We've been there and we do understand.

I bet God gets disappointed (and discouraged as well) with the world.  Some of the people on earth get a "do over" because of God's mercy.  It really makes you want to avoid doing the same wrong thing twice.  You may not get another "Mercy".  But with some people--those who consistently do wrong--he is totally discouraged.  They do the same wrong things over and over and have no intention of coming under His authority.  And He sees their hearts.  He knows their intentions.

When you love someone, you don't want to hurt them.  If you love God, you don't want to hurt him or embarrass him.  You want to please Him.  I don't understand those who profess to be His children and intentionally cause Him pain.  Our hours on earth are but a drop in the ocean of eternity.

Jesus said, Luke 9:23 "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily and follow Me."  Luke was a physician and like a good doctor, he gave us the perfect and exact prescription for being a Christian.  The other Gospel writers left the word "daily" out.  We need a dose of denying ourselves and "Coming After (second)" every day.

Sheepherders were at the very bottom of the economic and social scale in the Jews community.  They were dirty, and they couldn't keep the laws of ritualistic washing required to be accepted in society.  They were probably declared unclean.  Much like lepers.  And yet, those were the very people that God chose to be first at the manger.  One more example of how those that we might reject, God chooses.  The gospel is for the whole world.

Luke 2:8-9 "There were shepherds... abiding in the field…and lo, the angel of the Lord shone round about them and they were sore afraid."  The angel told them where to find the baby and then the multitude of angels praised God and went away into heaven.  That would be enough to scare me to death.  Luke 2:15 "…the shepherds said to each other, Let's go to Bethlehem and see this thing…" Knowing human nature, there must have been a crowd following these fellows by the time they found the manger, because Luke 2:17 tells us that the shepherds began telling everyone what had happened to them.  Mary and Joseph probably told the shepherds their stories as well.  All of them had seen angels.

 Our pastor said that the shepherds did three things right.  The first was that they sought God.  They said, "Let's go…and see this thing…with haste."  Jer. 29:13 says that if you seek him you will find him.  They found him, and were awe struck as they told Mary and Joseph what had happened and why they were there.  Mary and Joseph had just been through a horrible ordeal.  A long trip, no place to stay, Child birth and the filth of a stable.  The shepherd's story lifted Mary and Joseph's hearts.

The second thing was that they immediately told the story to others.  Luke 2:18 "And all that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds."

The third thing was that they worshiped Him and praised God.  Vs 20, "The shepherds …glorified and praised God for all the things that they had seen and heard…"  If we do those three things: Seek, Tell, and Worship, then we have received the message of Christmas in our hearts.

In the first Epistle of John, John uses the word "write" or "written" fourteen times.  He is telling the people that he (John) is putting his words on paper for a reason.  He says "…these things I write to you that your joy may be full." John 1:4   (Joy to the World, the Lord is Come!)

He wanted them to hear from a first hand witness--who knew, touched and listened to Jesus--the wondrous gospel story.  He continues in vs. 5 "This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare (write) unto you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all."

Recently in church we sang the Christmas chorus, "I Have Seen the Light…shining in the darkness…bursting through the shadows…delivering the the dawn.   I have seen the Light…whose holy name is Jesus…His kingdom is forever…He reigns on heaven's throne.

The melody to those words is beautiful.  If you haven't ever heard it, well, Google it!!!

He truly is the light of the world.  In the Old Testament, Isaiah prophesied the coming light in Is. 9:2 "The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light: they that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them has the light shined."  Good news for everyone.

And we are to reflect that light.  Matthew 5:14 "You are the light of the world…" and in Acts 13:47 "I have set you to be a light to the Gentiles that you should be for salvation to the ends of the earth."

Light breaks through darkness so that the eyes can see.  The world is stumbling around in the dark, trying to find meaning and direction.  They need light.

Turn the switch on for somebody.  You don't have to win the whole world.  One person will do.   Tell them what Jesus has done in your life.  You don't even need to know scripture to do that.  Shed light.

Santa Claus
Frosty the Snowman
Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer
The Christmas Elf
The Grinch, etc. etc.

What happened to Jesus?  What happened to the Nativity?

I went to the "Castle" in Muskogee the other night. There were over one-hundred huge blow up Santas, Micky Mouse with reindeer, ducks, snowmen, and on and on.  There were two or three barns, but no Jesus.  No Nativity.  Santa was leaning out of the barn.  Ho, ho, ho.  I couldn't help but wonder why you would have a barn with no Baby in the Manger.

Did we give up the battle?  Have we lost the war on Christmas?  What is the problem with the Christ in Christmas.  It seems like the whole world is afraid of being politically incorrect or offending somebody.  It might hurt sales.   Offend them.  Christmas is ours.  It is the reason we have a time of giving.  It is the reason for the whole shebang.

I try to spend my dollars at stores that honor Christmas.

Happy Holliday?  No thank you.

Read the Christmas story when you give your family their presents this year.  Three or four minutes to explain the reason for Christmas.  They sure won't get it in the media.  Matthew 1:18-2:23                                                                                                                                  

I think that I have hit all the high points in Hebrews.  You know that reading my blog is no substitute for reading Hebrews yourself.  I encourage you to do that.  My favorite Bible to read--just for the joy of reading--is the Living Bible.  It isn't a translation.  It is a transliteration.  It puts everything into words of today.  How we would say it if we were writing it.

I no longer put up a tree.  I have three little trees that I set on the buffet and on the entry table. When it was just Ken and me, I quit decorating.  I try to go to one of my children's houses every year.

I was thinking of Christmas times in the past, and one of them stood out in my mind.  It was the year that Chatty Cathy was all the rage.  She had a pull string that activated her voice.  Finding one was hard.  Everyone sold out.  Finding three was harder.  My mom and dad had come to Virginia for Christmas that year with my four year old sister.  (She was a very unexpected bundle of joy.  I was 21 when she was born.)  My two girls were four, and five.  (Becky and Lisa--my sister--were born seven days apart.) After days and days of looking, we finally found three Chatty Cathys.

Becky--who always wants to know what will happen if she tries something--pulled out the string and cut it off.  Chatty Cathy only got to chat for a couple of minutes.  That was the shortest-lived Christmas present anyone in our family ever got.  All that effort to find a Chatty Cathy for her!!  All that was left was a good story.

We look for those special gifts because the wise men brought precious gifts to Jesus.   I love the phrase that was coined a few years ago, "Jesus is the reason for the season."  When you bought something, some of the stores put your purchase in a bag that had that printed on the outside.

I always say, "Merry Christmas" at the checkout stands.  It may be the only time they hear it anymore.  If they say "Merry Christmas" back to me,  I say, "Jesus is the reason for the season."  I usually get a smile.  Join me.  

Finally, the writer of Hebrews gives up on telling us about the people of faith individually.  He must have realized that he would never finish his letter if he didn't consolidate what he was saying.  So he listed Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthae, David and Samuel and all the other prophets in one single verse.  Hebrews 11: 32.

We are most familiar with the stories of King David.  We know that the Christ was to come as the King of the Jews, the Messiah--of the lineage of David.  And at this time of year, you remember that the prophecy of Christ's birth was foretold to be in the City of David--in Bethlehem.  Joseph and Mary left Nazareth to travel all the way there to be taxed--most probably on foot.  And she was at least eight and a half months pregnant.

Joseph should be listed as a man of faith in my opinion because he lived his faith in spite of public opinion.  He believed the angel's message concerning Jesus.  He had faith in God.

Of course, all the Jewish people thought that the Messiah would be King of the Jews and overthrow the Romans.  They were waiting on an earthly King.  They were looking for a King like David who would once again put Israel on the map.  Jesus didn't fit the bill.  One day they were waving over him with palm leaves singing "Hosanna"and the next day calling for His death.  He was a great disappointment.  They had thought that he was the one.  He was.  But not what they were looking for.

He is our King, but His kingdom is not of this world.   We are his people.  And now, "…they (we) desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their (our) God: for he has prepared for them (us) a city."  Hebrews 11:16

Matthew 25:34 "Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:"  That's where we're going!!

He's a felon.
She's a liar.
He's an embezzler.
She's a thief.
He's a cheater.
She's a harlot.
People are labeled by the sins they have committed.  And sometimes it is hard to rise above them.

A harlot.  That's what Hebrews 11:31 has to say about Rahab.  She is listed as one of the people of faith, but identified by her sins.   However, Rahab was elevated to a new status.  A woman of great faith.  Remembered along with Abraham and Moses.

James, the half-brother of Jesus said in James 2:25 "Likewise, also, wasn't Rahab the harlot justified by works, when she had received the messengers, and had sent them out  another way?"

So don't despair if you have been labeled.  There is redemption.  Everything in her past was wiped away when she took a step in the right direction and hid the Israelite spies.  She had heard about their God and had believed what she had heard.  Her faith was so strong that she put her own life in danger to hide them on her rooftop.

They told her to let a red piece of cloth hang from her window, and when they invaded everyone would know which house was hers.  She did.  And saved not only her life, but the lives of her family.

When you have faith in God, and live your faith in front of your children and grandchildren, there is a very good chance that you will be able to save your family as well.  Rahab did.

The ages of the women in my Sunday morning Bible class are for the most part over sixty five.  We have a few younger women.  One in particular--Sandy--has taken us under her wing.  She bakes banana nut bread for each of us every now and then.  For absolutely no reason at all except she likes us.

At the end of a person's life, they have fewer contacts, fewer activities, and many are alone.   It feels good to have a younger person treat you like you are special.  I am eating banana bread for breakfast this week.  Yum.

Simple kindness is something that all of us can participate in.  The only requirement is that you look around you for someone who is going through a hard time.  Or through a happy time.  Or any kind of time.  

One of the younger women in my church--Amy--sends me a card in the mail every week or two.  It's fun to get a real letter in the mail.  Most mail is junk.  When you go to the mailbox and see a hand written address on an envelope, you know someone was thinking of you.

I was raised in a time when everyone wrote letters and put them in the mail.  Hardly anyone does that anymore.  I have letters that people wrote from years and years ago.  A letter is real.  You can touch it.  You can save it.   Email is quicker, but not the same.  Nobody that I know writes newsy email letters.

I am glad that they didn't have email back when the Bible was written.  Someone would have deleted it for sure.

Hebrews 11:24-25 "By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter; Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season."

Which is followed by an account of some of the ways he proved his faith:

He forsook Egypt, his wealth and his position
He kept the passover
He sprinkled blood on the lintel so that the death angel would pass over
He led hundreds of thousands of people out of Egypt.  (Crabby, unhappy people)
He passed through the Red Sea on dry land
He led the Israelites to (not into) the promised land

Can you imagine being a prince in the house of Pharaoh and choosing the wilderness, dust, and forty years of wandering instead?  Moses is a huge example of faith.  He is larger than life.
And after all that, he made one mistake and God didn't let him lead  the people into the promised land.  You would think that after God made an example out of Moses' mistake that the people would do what God wanted them to.  But no.  They didn't.  Every generation is a new group of sinners.

Sometimes we get the idea that the people in the Bible were special.  But they were flawed, just like you and me.  They were ordinary people who did extraordinary things.

When God spoke to Moses from the burning bush, He told Moses that he was on holy ground.  But the thing that made it holy was God.  Any old bush would have done.

God can use anyone.  All that is necessary is a willing heart.

The next three generations of men after Abraham that are named as men of faith are Isaac, his son Jacob and Jacob's son Joseph.  Hebrews 11:20-22.  Abraham had quite a family.  After Isaac had Jacob and Esau, Esau sold his birthright to Jacob for a bowl of beans.   What a guy.  Hunger before heritage.

The oldest son (Esau) was due to get everything.  Jacob tricked his father Isaac into thinking he was Esau so that he could fool him and get the heir's blessing.  Then he had to flee for his life.  It was years before he could go back to his home.

Jacob had twelve sons and as far as I can find, one daughter--Dinah.  You remember that ten of the sons threw Joseph into a well, then sold him as a slave.  They were jealous of his father's affection for Joseph.  (There is a book of factual-fiction about Dinah called, "The Red Tent."  I found it interesting.)

But God had a plan.  And Joseph trusted God.  He became the top government official in Egypt and many years later was joyfully reunited with his brothers and his father.

That is a very rough sketch.  I share it simply to encourage you that if your family has problems, don't despair.  Just keep trusting God.  He has a plan.  Abraham had no idea how everything was going to turn out.  Neither did Isaac or Jacob.  And I am sure that Joseph had a lot of bad days as an Egyptian slave.

Life is short.  We live by faith. Hebrews 11:13, 16 "These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.  But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly:  wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for he has prepared a city for them."  We are strangers on this earth.  Pilgrims.  Our hope lies in the promise of God that we will spend eternity with him.  He has prepared a city for us.  I plan to live there forever.

There are quite a few verses in Hebrews about Abraham--the father of the Israelite (Hebrew) people.   The greatest example of his faith was when God sent him to sacrifice his only son Isaac--which was a picture of the sacrifice God would make with his only son, Jesus.  God provided a substitute for Abraham , but up to the last minute, Abraham was ready to do what God had asked him to do.  In the same way, God provided a substitute for us.  His son Jesus.

Of course, God had no intention for Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, only to test Abraham's faith.  Isaac was the son of the promise God made to Abraham (and Sara) that he would be the father of many people.  Without Isaac, there would have been no future.  Abraham was an old old man and his wife Sara was way past the age of child bearing.

The fifth person of faith is Sara.  Hebrews 11:11 "Through faith also Sara herself received strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age, because she judged him (God) faithful who had promised."  Sara had her doubts.  Her faith wavered in the face of the impossibility of her situation.  So she sent her hand-maiden Hagar in to Abraham because she felt like she (Sara) was too old to conceive.

Big mistake.  You can't help but wonder if the entire Arab-Jewish animosities would never have occurred if Sara hadn't had a moment of weakness in her faith.  But Ishmael was born to Hagar.  He became the father of the people of the desert.  And the Jews and the Arabs have been at war ever since.

We all make mistakes.   Sara had a moment of weakness and tried to do God's job for him.   The fact that Sara is listed as a person of faith in this chapter shows us that God forgives us.

Ishmael and Isaac.  Arab and Jew.  At war forever.   I have heard people in government say that Christians do not believe there will be peace in the Middle East.  Duh.  They need to read history.  Biblical history.  I haven't put my faith in government.  My faith is in God.

I have been writing about the faith chapter in the book of Hebrews.  And as I was thinking about men of faith, I couldn't help but share with you (yesterday)  some of the story of my dad and his brother.  They were the two greatest men of faith that I have known.  Kind, caring, giving…so much like Jesus.  Men of faith.  They lived their faith up to the day that each of them left us in death to see their faith fulfilled.  People like that are such a witness to us.  They strengthen our own faith.

After the writer tells us about the faith of Abraham, he speaks these words in Hebrews 11:13 "These, (the men of faith) all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth."  Men of faith look afar off, they are persuaded, they embrace the promises of God.  The world looks on men like that as strange.  They live what they believe.

Those of us who believe God's promises don't think that they are strange at all.

There is such peace in knowing people like my dad and his brother.  They were both quiet men.  Unassuming, gentle, and generous.  Confident that what God had promised, God would do.

I can still see my dad--after he had given up on getting all of us together for family devotions--wandering from room to room with the Bible in his hand, reading out loud.  He would start reading in his bedroom, then move through all the rooms in our house one by one.  Everybody got some of it.  He got all of it.

Jesus said that if we had faith the size of a mustard seed, we could move mountains.  Dad's three children are also practicing people of faith.  I think he did okay.  

When my dad (Elmer) was seven, his dad was murdered.  It was the wild west.  Everyone wore a gun.  His dad was a cattleman and had been very wealthy in the late eighteen hundreds.  After he was killed, my dad's mom married again and her new husband absconded with everything.  Leaving her penniless.  Oklahoma wasn't even a state.  The law was an abstract idea.  She got a job as a cook, my dad started working, and they made it--but it was tough.  He was just a kid.

He was the seventh son.  Three were already dead, one (Harvey) was very sick, and the other two were grown and gone.   Oklahoma was dry at the time, and  the two oldest brothers had rigged their dad's car to haul booze in a secret compartment under the car.  They were bootleggers.  Later they got jobs, but for a while, they ran liquor.  Do you have any characters like that in your family?

It is a miracle that my dad turned out to be the man that he was. After a year or two, their mom opened a restaurant and the boys slaughtered hogs, cured and smoked the bacon and hams, cooked, washed dishes, served the food and whatever else needed to be done.

Harvey grew up and became a devout Catholic.  My dad became a saint in the Baptist church.  Both of them were very Godly men.  I have always wondered about the circumstances of the older two sons--raised rich--and the younger two sons who were raised poor.

Matthew 5:3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit: For their's is the kingdom of God."  That doesn't mean you have a weak spirit, it means that you are trodden down by circumstances but still trust God.

Those two brothers are now citizens of the kingdom of God.

There's an interesting verse about Noah in Heb. 11:7, "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark…"

God is always warning us.  In his Word.  We should be afraid of the outcome if we disobey.   But there is a funny thing about the human race, we always do the wrong things.  It's in our nature.  A mother has to teach her children to do what is right.  Don't bite.  Don't push.  Don't kick anybody.   Don't throw rocks at people.  Etc., etc.  You don't ever have to teach a child to do wrong.  They do that naturally.

The Bible says that we come from the womb telling lies.  But God gives us a solution.  He speaks to us in his Word.   Psalms119: 11 "Your word have I hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against you."  All sin is against God.  You may involve someone else, but ultimately you break the rule that God made.  Not the rule of the world.  The world doesn't care how you turn out.

Romans 4:22-23  "…being fully persuaded that what God had promised, he was able also to perform.  And therefore it was imputed to him for righteousness."

You either believe that God knows what he is talking about and by faith follow his path for your life.  Or you believe the Bible doesn't really mean what it says.

Look around you.  Who are the people that have peace in their lives.  Even in the midst of horrible circumstances.

You don't become a better person by sitting around thinking about it.  You have to determine to do better.  Pull yourself up by your spiritual bootstraps and get on with it.  

Science has it's place.  It just doesn't address the issues of guilt, sadness,  joy, hope, thoughts.  Every time I read about a new scientific discovery, I think:  God did that.  It's been there all along.  Every thing that science discovers was put there by God.  Absolute truth never changes.

The third man of faith that is mentioned is Noah.  Can you imagine how he must have felt as people ridiculed him day after day.  They were living in a dry land and Noah is building an ark.  He got up every day for years and years and pieced boards together.  But Noah had made a decision somewhere in his past that the rest of civilization had failed to do.  Noah had put his trust in God.  If God said it was going to rain, well, it was going to rain.  It's just a matter of when.  That is simple faith.

When I get up in the morning and go out to get the paper, I always do two things.  First, I look up and praise God for the weather--whatever it is.  Even if I am getting soaked.  The other morning, the sky looked like it did back in the forties.  Before smog.  The stars were like crystal pieces of ice in the sky.  The milky way was stellar.  If you don't have rain, you don't know how to fully appreciate a clear sky.

Second.  I turn and look toward the East.  I am always wondering whether today will be the day.  Some people think the second coming is a pipe dream.  For me, it's a reality.   Christ said he was coming back.  I believe it.  That's faith.  In addition, I get to see the sun come up, and the magnificent colors that God has painted while I am wondering about it all.  My faith is not a fire insurance policy.  It is a rock on which I have built my life.

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for.  The evidence of things not seen."  That's how our writer starts the eleventh chapter of Hebrews.

Substance.  Evidence.  You see it in the lives of those who have given themselves to God through faith in his Son.