Newspaper Columns

It looks like May will be my month to write once again for our local newspaper. I have missed writing the Good News column far more than I thought I would, so I'm really glad it's my turn. I'll put the text of the column here since some of your won't be reading the Cook County News-Herald anytime soon.

Here's the column for May 1:

Wow! It seems like forever since we've had a chance to just sit down and talk like this. How have you been? I'm sure so much has happened in your life since we met last. I know I've been busy.

Winter wasn't too bad this year. Yeah, not too much snow, and I don't remember that we had so many days of below zero temperatures either. I suppose winter weather in northeast Minnesota is a little like what I've heard about having a baby: that the pain is intense during delivery but soon forgotten in the aftermath of new life. Not having had that experience personally, I can only assume there is some truth there.

Have you heard any good jokes lately? Carson Haring sent me one the other day and Bobbie B emails me some from time to time. Oh, I'd love to share them with you, but that would be like a long time county resident revealing their most successful fishing hole or blueberry patch. You just have to get out there and find your own. I know you understand.

What can I tell you, then? Well . . . let me see. Christmas came and went. The local Salvation Army Service Unit got involved in assisting some friends and neighbors and I helped with that. Cornerstone invited the local community to Easter dinner. Had 110 people come and eat with us. Really nice folks, too. I met some I had not met before. Linda and I went to a conference in Louisville, Kentucky after Easter. It was called "Together for the Gospel." Seven thousand pastors. You should have heard them sing!

What did I like best? Being in the south was good. Okay, it was great. Redbud and dogwood blooming. Sunshine. Eighty degrees with a light breeze. Sweet tea. (Why tea is seasonal on the North Shore I believe I will never understand.) Oh, you meant about the conference. That's easy. Eight excellent messages on the validity and necessity of an uncorrupted gospel in our day from wise and brilliant men through whom God spoke.

The gospel? Surely you know what the gospel is; the good news about Jesus. Never heard of it, you say. Well here it is in a nutshell. God created human beings to enjoy God's glory and love in a face to face relationship that would be their deepest joy forever, but those human beings declined God's offer. They disobeyed God. They sinned. Their sin separated them from God with nary a hope of ever getting back into His good graces. They couldn't help themselves. They were sunk, and all their children after them were sinners and separated from God, subject to the penalty of death, and without hope in the world.

Even though God was perfectly just and righteous in condemning their sin, God loved human beings. He loves you and he loves me, and he does not want us to suffer the penalty of eternal separation from him. He wants us folks to know his love, his goodness, his mercy and his glory, so he did the most amazing thing. God came into the world himself. He took on flesh. God became a man, the man Jesus Christ. Jesus lived the life we all should have lived but couldn't. Jesus was innocent, sinless and because he was God, he was eternally innocent and sinless. Because he was God he could offer his innocent and sinless life in exchange for all of us. He
could take the penalty of death for every sinner that ever did or ever will live, including the penalty for your sins and mine. And that is just what he did. Jesus died on the cross giving his life in death in exchange for us.

Now, when we believe in Jesus and trust our lives to him in faith, God forgives our sin on account of Jesus. He changes our heart and our inclination toward sin, and he gives us eternal life with Jesus. Through faith in Jesus, God reinstates the relationship we declined by our sin. We no longer have to be afraid of what God thinks of us, because now we know that He loves us. He sent Jesus to die in our place. No greater love has any man than this, that he lays down his life for his friend. Jesus laid down his life for us as a clear expression of God's love for us.

Yes! God loves you. Yes. Even though you did that. Yes, even though you think that way sometimes. Yep, even then.  Yes. Listen, there is no sin, no guilt, no shame you can mention, nothing you can confess in the past or the present that God doesn't already know about and has already decided about. He loves you. Jesus died for you before you did any of those things. He loved you before you ever gave him a reason. He loves you now. He loves you always.

That's the Good News.

Behind Deceit

My Bible software is incredibly legalistic. I had no idea. I started using the software's "Read the Bible Through in a Year" function. I figured, new software, new year, I don't mind starting over, so sure, I'll give it a try. It sets out each day's reading next to a selection box. Below the day's reading are the next two days' readings, also with selection boxes. When you've read the listed passages you check the selection box and the next day's reading moves to the head of the list. It's all good.

Until you miss a day. Yes, sometimes I miss a day. Sometimes I have to read other things. Sometimes the telephone rings, like it did today and I had to get involved in someone else's life for a while. It happens. But not for my Bible software. If you miss a day, when next you open the software, there's a picture of the cover of your default Bible version with a big red banner across the front that reads, "BEHIND." I don't know whether it's a statement of condition or a personal accusation, but I can tell you, I don't like it, not one bit. Imagine getting bullied into reading your Bible regularly by a computer Bible software program. I think if it were so smart it would just read it for me. It's supposed to be helpful and save me time, right?

Well, of course, just to show them, I stopped getting "BEHIND." In fact, I read forward four days. So there! The reading is in Genesis. I've read it many, many times, but this time I'm using the Inductive Bible Study (www.precept.org) highlights that are included in the software. I'm reading slower, making observations along the way, and gleaning a great deal of really amazing truth. For instance, Abraham deceived both Pharaoh and Abimelech. Sarah deceived Hagar. Jacob deceived Isaac . . . and Esau . . . and Laban  (who deceived Jacob). . . and Laban again . . . and Esau again. Simeon and Levi deceived Shechem over Dinah. Joseph's brother's deceived Jacob. Potiphar's wife deceived her husband and her household over Joseph. Joseph temporarily deceives his brothers. And of course, the entire book starts with the Serpent deceiving Eve and Cain deceiving Abel. If you didn't know better you would think that every human being after Adam was a son of a deceiver.

But that's the point, isn't it? Generation after generation, situation after situation, circumstance upon circumstance, selfishness and deceit reign in the human heart. Even the most faithful have their moments of faithlessness when, rather than trusting God implicitly to keep His promise, they attempt to gain or protect God's blessing through their own efforts, which often amounts to deceit. I read the stories of the lives and I come away asking, "Is no one faithful?"

Throughout this entire first book of Moses, there is one who is always faithful, who makes a promise and keeps it, who never sacrifices his integrity for expediency: God (Elohim), the LORD (Yahweh), God Almighty (El-shaddai). "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring," He said. "He shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heal," He said.

"I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great so that you will be a blessing," He promised Abram. "I will bless those who bless you and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Through every scene of deceit in the book of Genesis, God, though not always mentioned, consistently works in the lives of deceitful men to accomplish His promise. Not once is He stymied. Not once does His plan fail. Even though we are faithless, He remains faithful.

It doesn't take some legalistic, hard nosed Bible software to see what's happening here. God's plan for the world, God's plan for your country, God's plan for your church, God's plan for your family, God's plan for you moves forward without obstacle as He uses even the deceitful and faithless to accomplish His goals. So why rely on ourselves? Why trust in deceit when God will have His way? Wouldn't it simply be easier to trust God and wait for Him to keep His promise, since that's what He's going to do anyway?

By the way, I really love my Bible software. I've been using it since 1991. Check out the new version at www.logos.com.