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Published: 21 April 2017

It sounds like a college major but it is worse than that.  It’s the desire to present ourselves better than we really are and it has been an affliction of the human race for thousands of years.  Adam and Eve hid behind leaves, we hide behind a façade or an image of what we want people to think about us.  Warren Wiersbe said, or quoted, “Half of the misery in the world comes from trying to look, instead of trying to be, what one is not.”  Ouch.  That’s a lot of misery!  The idea of becoming more than we are is good.  The idea of practicing what we believe we should be even when we are not there yet is also good.  The hypocrisy that says we are something that we are not is of the enemy.  Jesus warned us of this as did the prophets and apostles.  As the farm saying goes…”The chickens always come home to roost.”  We can’t really keep the front up forever, eventually we’ll be seen for what we really are and chances are somebody already knows.  What are we to do about this affliction?  1) Practice being good rather than looking good.  2) Say less, do more.  3) Ruthlessly eliminate contempt from your heart because you are not really that much better than anybody you despise.  4)  Be grateful for who you are and how God put you together.  5) Be accountable to a peer group that loves you enough to tell when you when you are living a double life.  Sunday, Lord willing, we’ll be studying Ananias and Sapphira.  They had some serious image management issues and it cost them their lives.  Let’s be who we are but be becoming who we were saved to be. 

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Published: 14 April 2017

There are people that dismiss the resurrection of Jesus as a fanciful and symbolic application of the Spring growth cycle.  In other words they suggest that someone years ago applied what happened with his green beans to a person.  Said guy was out working in his garden and had a great idea.  “I’ll make up a story about a man that is like a green bean, he gets killed and buried but then he comes back to life!  His life/death/life cycle will be a hope-filled metaphor for years to come encouraging people that just when things seem their worst, it is about to turn for the best.  When their hopes and dreams die, they will remember the man that was like the green bean and new life will be infused into their bleak world.”   I’m being just slightly sarcastic .  There is a connection between the resurrection and a garden but it starts with God and not with the bean.  The Spring growth cycle does point to a greater truth, a real one, a historically verifiable reality.  In fact, every growing season before the resurrection pointed to it and every growing season since then points back to it.  We are surrounded by billions of reminders of God’s power to bring life from death.  One of our farmers from church told me last week that there are 80,000 kernels of corn in one bag of seed corn.  80,000!  That’s 80,000 reminders per bag of the truth Jesus taught about how to live a fruitful life AND what Jesus did to bring us life.  The resurrection of Jesus is not a fanciful myth encouraging us to resurrect our dreams.  The resurrection of Jesus Christ was proof positive that the Father was pleased with the sacrifice of the Son and declared Him to be the Son of God with power.  The resurrection means sin can be forgiven.  It means we can be transformed.  It means we have a certain future in God’s great universe.  Because Jesus lives, we too will live.  “Because He lives, I can face tomorrow.  Because He lives all fear is gone.  I know, He holds, my life, my future, in His hands.”  Amen!