Family is Important to God; Climate...not so much

"As for you, be fruitful and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth and multiply in it." (Gen 9:7)

"While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease." (Gen 8:22)

Today as I was reading through the Genesis account of the early earth, I am reminded of what God considers important, and what is unimportant.

Looking at Gen 8:22 first, God made a promise that the earth will have a regular schedule under which we will harvest and live and till the soil. This is one of the reasons that I don't really worry about global warming, H1N1 or any other faddish media scare. God regulates our lives here on earth. Yes, it is true that we live on the point of a needle in terms of the delicate nature of our existence, where (relatively) slight changes in any number of environmental variables would make our lives unliveable. However, if we believe in the Lord for salvation, we must also believe in His promises to maintain liveable conditions here on earth. He is the Creator, and his creation has been far more durable than any foolishness we can reap upon it. We must remember this as the world goes around losing their heads over an imagined catastrophe that will never happen. After all, we've gone from the fear of the ice-age (70's) to the fear of the ozone layer (80's) to the fear of global warming (00's), now to the fear of global climate change (fear of any kind of change in the weather...???) God is calming us down and simply saying, "Chill out, because these things are not important - I am in control."

The verse that I find God's important commandment however is where God reiterates his "be fruitful and multiply" command originally given to Adam, and now given to Noah. What God is telling us is that our first duty as worshippers of Him, is to go out and have children.

In this day and age of carefully constructed family planning, it seems odd to hear the Lord calling us to multiply. I believe that as Christians, we have a specific calling to have children based on this Genesis verse. We are to reproduce and raise our children in a Godly manner, teaching them Godly principles first, above all things. In this way, we are to create a new generation of Christians, who will then beget more Christians. It will only take one generation to fail in their obligation in order to have the world forget Christ. Right now, we have witnessed our European Christians essentially lose their faith in the span of only two generations (or so), and we are in danger of seeing American and Canadian Christians meet the same fate. What will go a long way to fighting this trend will be for Christians to make a concerted effort to multiply Christians in the next generation through a deliberate and concerted effort.

Those who do not follow Christ are pulled by a different ideology - that of walking a path where only 2-3 children are acceptable by society because it will be easier to care for this number of kids. Mixed with the growing environmental sentiment that people destroy the environment, there is a lot of pressure for families today to minimize their number of children.

As Christians, we are faced with a pull in decidedly opposite directions. Which way to go? Do we follow the commandment of God, or do we instead follow the ways of the world?

Our answer and direction is found in the Bible:

"Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world - the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life - is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever." (1 John 2:15-17)

Essentially, God is saying this - where the world conflicts with His ways, if you are a Christian, you must choose His will. Essentially everything that we know as men is finite and temporary. We mostly live as if the world started the day we were born, and we flail about with our small slices of knowledge although we will never really see the big picture outside ourselves. However, the Lord knows all and He has detailed the way we should live in the Bible. So our choice ultimately as believers is to either decide to commit to following God with everything we have (believing that He knows all), or to live in accordance with the current fashion of the world (believing God doesn't know squat). And ultimately, if we choose the latter, we are really exhibiting that we believe that God knows nothing...and then, where is our faith?

Lord Jesus, thank You for Your word. That You have taken the time through the generations to give us Your wisdom and guidelines for living. The command to be fruitful is one that my family does embrace, but at the same time, we have struggled to live it out completely for fear of things like proper insurance coverage and the like. Please help me to work through these struggles of unbelief and to simply place the future of our family into Your hands knowing that each child is a gift from You. Although I hardly know what that future looks like, I know that I can trust in You because You have always kept Your promise to maintain the earth season after season. And if You can do something that large, I know that maintaining our lives is a simple task indeed.

May our family's worship of You grow deeper with each season. In the mighty name of Jesus I pray, AMEN.

Flood Times Are Long

"Now the flood was on the earth forty days..." (Gen 7:17)

"And the waters prevailed on the earth one hundred and fifty days." (Gen 7:24)


I think about the times of flood in our lives and how they can seem to go on and on forever. When I thought about Noah's Ark, I knew that it rained for 40 days, but I didn't think about how long the waters stood covering the earth - 150 days. When taken all together, it becomes over 6 months time (Update - looking at the scriptures again, it is 40 days of rain, 150 days of waters, 40 days of decreased waters - the rains started on the 2nd month and they left the ark in the 10th month - ~8 months).

Can you imagine the feelings of Noah and his family? At first, they are partially relieved to see the rain as a fulfillment of God's direction in their lives. They know that God will keep them safe as the Ark begins to float along on the floodwaters. But during that time, it continues to rain and after 40 days, it stops. Flood over, right? Well, God still had more cleaning to accomplish and He continues to leave the waters on the land for another 150 days. Whoa, that's an eternity to spend on a gigantic floating zoo.

Although the Bible never really gets into it, the waiting must have been quite a grind for Noah's family. And it probably seemed to them at times as if God wouldn't ever restore land to the 'waterworld' that they found themselves in. But in everything God had a purpose and a plan.

Today, I am encouraged by this because I find myself in a type of personal flood situation. It isn't dire, and thankfully it is isolated to my family living through it, but it seems interminable sometimes - as if I'm staring daily on the railing of a ship in the middle of the ocean that isn't finding a port of call. Water everywhere, everyday.

But, God has been doing a cleaning out in my life, as well as in the life of my wife, and together we are regaining a spiritual strength that had been drained out of us. So, I can see that the Lord has His own plans in everything. They certainly are not like anything I would have imagined, but I know that they are accomplishing a good work of cleaning out the filth and grime that had been accumulating in our lives.

Maybe He isn't done yet, and that is certainly His prerogative (as is everything in my life). My hope though is that my flood won't last longer than Noah's. =p

Lord Jesus, thank you for today's encouragement out of the story of Noah. It is so easy for me to get so fixated on my own situation and how I want to change it, without really submitting myself to whatever work you're already doing in our lives. May I never negate Your work in whatever fashion it comes. Thank You for everything You have done for us, and for all that You are refining and cleaning in our family. In Jesus' name, AMEN.

The Folly of Trusting Our Hearts

"He who trusts in his own heart is a fool" (Prov 28:26)

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?" (Jer 17:9)

We live in a world that commonly says, "Follow your heart", and the message is constantly pounded into our brains. Consequently, we have a tendency to make snap decisions based on the whims of our emotions rather than on Biblical wisdom or consultation with the Holy Spirit. The result over time becomes a lifetime of destructive choices and haphazard living resulting in the culmination of nothing.

Ultimately, our lives will be judged on one simple question, "Did you believe in Jesus Christ, and accept His gift of salvation by making Him Lord of your life?" There will be many who will say, "Lord, I believed in you...but I was too busy following the whims of my heart to truly make you Lord of my life. I believed, but never altered my lifestyle to conform to your Word." And there is no salvation for such as those because even demons believe in Christ Jesus, but they are damned because they refuse to worship and follow Him.

Why do we live? Is it merely to follow our own lusts and fulfill our wants? Or are we preparing ourselves for an eternal kingdom under the throne of God? What good is all that we gather or even create during our lifetimes, if we end up living the type of life that destroys ourselves for eternity and destroys others in the process?

By the above statements, you might think that I think so highly of myself and believe that my life is righteous, but it is actually the complete opposite. Every day of every moment, I am reminded of how vile and wicked my heart is. No man is above the temptations of this world, and they are a continual pull - of which my heart is easily a willing partner. Many times I fail to check my temptations, but I pray that for life's major decisions and choices, that I do have the wisdom to stop and be measured in my decision making (not that I have never failed in this regard either).

Despite myself, I do know that my heart is for the Lord. The Christian life is not devoid of failures, but rather it is one that strives to be bettered by them while conforming ourselves to be more like Christ. Because we love Him, we want to be like Him. Not that our actions have any saving power, but rather the willingness to change and submit is just an indicator of the fact that our hearts are given to the Lord. He ultimately has done the salvation work on the cross, and His resurrection reflects His power over death.

So what I'm reminded today is that I need to fill myself with God's word and meditate on the scriptures constantly in order to make God's ways the default system within me. Otherwise, I would always be pulled this way or that way by my wicked heart. Every commercial or advertisement would be an easy sell for such a state of mind, and I would ultimately be sold off piece by piece to all the shiny baubles of this world.

Lord Jesus, I know that my heart has been in desperate need of reformation as I have been stagnant and in a state of atrophy in regards to my faith and in the knowledge of Your wisdom. Whatever happens in my life is secondary to living out a life in submission to Your Lordship. Please help me to do that daily, to live in conformity to your wisdom and not by the flighty whims of my heart. By the unchanging power of Your name, AMEN.

The Mysterious Mind of God

¹⁶ For “who has known the mind of the LORD that he may instruct Him?” But we have the mind of Christ. (1 Cor 2:16 NKJV)

There are times in my Christian walk, that I am tempted to believe that I know the Lord well enough to discern His will. And I sincerely believe that because we have the Holy Spirit as our counselor within us, that indeed, we are privy to His counsel in both general long term goals, and short term specific actions. But do we know His will? No, I do not believe that any of us have sufficient discernment to really know all that God has planned and the ways in which He executes that plan for our lives.

And that's a frustrating thing. We can do the exact things that are good and right in accordance with the prompting of the Holy Spirit, and receive absolutely no worldly gain at all. No favor, no new open doors, and can in fact suffer persecution, humiliation, and mocking.

All that is possible, but we never know what the Lord may have saved us from and what favor He has done for our souls in leading us into new directions. We will never know until we face judgment and review our lives before the throne.

What remains for us who have faith in the Lord, is to continue to worship, praise and be conformed to His word on a daily basis. Our circumstances should never determine where we stand in our walk with the Lord, but instead our faith should remain calm and steady through the valley of humiliation and the valley of the shadow of death. For to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Lord Jesus, there is much in our lives as Christians that requires a deep trust in You, and Your path is never the seemingly easy path of the world, but instead, it is a unique journey designed for each and every one of us. Sometimes we will experience great ease, and at other times, we will face events that are on the brink of what we can bear. But through it all, Your Spirit steadies us from within and gives us strength to do all things through Christ. Help me to have the mind of Christ and discernment to simply do what You lead me to, knowing that Your plan is always the best. Thank You for Your friendship and affection to us. In Jesus' name, Amen.