An Open Life

“You’ve got to have an open life.

You’ve got to have a life open to God and open to the family of God.

There are no secrets with God.”

From a Sermon by Preacher Clark, Early 1974.

Beware the soul that attempts to pressure you not to talk to others about things that really matter to you.  Such pressure comes from an evil heart.  As a pastor, I don’t need or want to know everything the people in my congregation think or do or say, but the man who makes them feel they are being disloyal if they do want to talk to me about something important that has happened or been said is laying a snare for their soul.  And the same thing applies to me.  I am sometimes criticized by those who have fallen away from Christ for how open I am with my congregation.  A backslidden relative wrote me several years ago and began by insisting that her email was only to be between her and me.  But I will never hold anything from the saints here that will benefit them, and her communications with me had value for them, so I shared it.  And I will always to that.  I do not make deals with the devil.  I am God’s servant, not his.

The first thing an abusive husband drills into his wife is the supreme importance of loyalty – to him, not to God and His righteousness!  If he convinces his wife that she is a disloyal, bad person if she ever talks about family matters to anyone outside the family (“family” meaning just him), then he can abuse her without fear of her exposing him.

Search your heart.  Is there someone making you feel that loyalty to him or her means that you cannot talk to others about things he has said or done to you?  If so, you had better wake up before that person’s foul spirit makes you its slave.  Or on the other hand, is there anyone that you are now pressuring to keep silent about what you have said or done to him, or to her?  If so, fall down right now and ask Jesus to forgive you for trying to enslave another person to your will and divide the body of Christ. 

I beg you all to give earnest heed to Preacher Clark’s wisdom!  Do not live in darkness!  Live in the peace of openness among the saints, and stay free and happy!

Now

“Say not, ‘What is the cause that the former days were better than these,’

for you do not enquire wisely concerning this.”

Ecclesiastes 7:10

Now is the best time of your life because now is the only time of your life.  Don’t miss out on your life today, looking backwards or dreaming about the days to come.

So What, If We Know the Truth about Christmas?

We know that nothing but the holy Ghost will change a heart and make a person right with God.  In the meantime, let’s be thankful for the things sinners have that keep them from acting altogether like beasts.  Let them believe that Christmas brings good will and peace to men.  Let them experience the gratification of giving presents.  So what, if we know that Christmas has nothing to do with Christ?  God is using that holiday, and other such things, to encourage sinful people to try to be good and to prevent them from giving expression to the wickedness that is in everyone’s heart who has not been cleansed by Christ.

The truth of the gospel has always been absent from this culture, but the culture’s increasing rejection of such things as Christmas and Easter is resulting in the rise of gross immorality and godlessness.  Men without Christ are better off with Christmas than they are without it.  God uses man’s religions for the good of His people who are still living in this dark world.  He restrains the cruelty of man with those ceremonial things.  To use such things for our good is the work of God, and we should not meddle in it, any more than we should meddle with His work of putting whomever He will into public office.  You do not want to live in a wicked world like this one without the restraining influence of false religion.

God’s wise servants offer His answer – life in the Spirit – to sinners who have begun to feel a hunger for God’s kind of righteousness and are seeking it.  God has not anointed anyone among us to destroy the very things He uses to control the depraved spirits of men.  If we interfere with His work and destroy what He is using for good, we will have only made life in this miserable world unnecessarily more difficult for His people, and for everyone else.

To paraphrase Paul (1Cor. 8:1), “So what if we know the truth about Christmas?  Knowledge will puff a person up!  Only what is done in love will edify.”  It is sad to watch saints who go on a crusade every fall to destroy Christmas, and every spring to destroy Easter, because they know about the pagan origins of those two holidays.  They have become so proud of what they know!  So what if such holidays have pagan origins?  This whole world has pagan origins.  What’s next?  Attack New Year’s Day?  That holiday, too, has pagan origins.  Child of God, back off.  Leave God’s business alone.  He is using all such things for your good.  Let Him do it, and be thankful for them!

Troublesome Saints

Part of a Sermon by Pastor John, February 18, 2012

I want everybody to be here in this Assembly of saints who wants to be here.  But there are some who, if allowed to come, would cause this body unnecessary problems; so, I cannot allow it.  Still, I do not like being in a room with just some of God’s people; I would sincerely love to be with all of them.  And I believe that everybody who has a heart for that to happen is going to see it when it does happen.  Someday, all who truly love peace and seek it will be together with God and His Son, and with every other believer who truly desires peace.

In the meantime, I must remain alert.  Some of God’s people love themselves more than they love others, and because of that, trouble follows them wherever they go.  The sheep of God’s pasture must be protected from such people, and it is the shepherd’s responsibility to do so.

Our Own Kind of Problems

Part of a Sermon by Pastor John, February 18, 2012

After God touched me and gave me a sober, godly mind, I began to notice how that saints who walk in the Spirit were spared a lot of the troubles that the world deals with.  God gives His obedient children a different set of problems to overcome, a different set of trials for their faith.  On the other hand, I also learned that if the minds of God’s people wander from the things of God, they start participating in those troubles of the world.  We want to walk in the Spirit and live above the world’s kind of problems, the way Christ Jesus did.  The world fights over one political or social cause after another, the way the ocean pounds vainly against the shore, changing nothing but making a constant roar.  The warfare of the saints is to overcome evil with good, and through God, the weapons of their warfare are mighty (2Cor. 10:4).