How Do I Get There?

Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, and how can we know the way?” John 14:5

Among the great promises in the first part of John 14 stands Thomas, and the disciple of our Lord is speaking for us. Many a song lyric and prayer echo his basic questions, "Where are You going, and how do I get there?" The answer of our Lord is almost too simple for us as He says, "I am..." The answer we seek, in all of its simple glory, we may read in the next verse. The answer is so staggering in its simplicity that we remember it easily. But, we might say with Thomas, it doesn't answer the question exactly, does it? The answer contains no GPS coordinates or the old 'you can't miss it' signs to look for. It becomes evident that the only way to get there is to come to Jesus. The preceding verses to Thomas's question have our Lord telling us that He is going and that He is returning to take us there. What causes Thomas the problem is that Jesus also says that he knows the destination and the path/method/means to get there. Thomas is our 'Um, no I don't' representative at this time and place. Praise the Lord that Thomas was there for us! Of course as readers of the Word of God centuries later, we also get in on the teaching joke because Thomas is right there with the One who is the way, and the truth, and the life.

May God bless you all this day with abundant life in Christ!

Bucky

Why Do We Study The Word?

Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth. But shun profane and idle babblings, for they will increase to more ungodliness. 2 Timothy 2:15-16

A friend and I waited for our order to arrive in a restaurant one day and across the quiet floor a man held forth on himself and his accomplishments. This is not at all unusual, many of us like to talk about ourselves. I even mentioned myself in the setting for this little story. The problem with talking about ourselves is when the subject seems inadequate to the task at hand and embellishment sets in. This is one place where jargon often proves helpful in showing the false accomplishments of the boaster holding forth with some of those idle babblings. As it did that day while we anticipated our lunch with nothing to say between us for the moment. The details of the boaster are not important, but it is in that condition we must not be when giving our testimony of the Word of God. This is why we study the Word and seek understanding from God. We do not want to be ashamed as we work!

Yours in Christ as we study His Word!

Bucky

Let The Living Water Flow!

Then he brought me back to the door of the temple; and there was water, flowing from under the threshold of the temple toward the east, for the front of the temple faced east; the water was flowing from under the right side of the temple, south of the altar.  Ezekiel 47:1

Front door, water flowing from under the threshold, cause for some alarm in most cases. Indoor plumbing was not a thing back in Ezekiel's day, but it certainly is in our time. If someone brought one of us to the front door of a place and water was flowing out from under the threshold, we would be for calling a plumber right quick. If you have lived in a house or apartment, you probably know the slightly ill feeling of a major leak or breakage in your plumbing system. You know the expense of a specialized technician, such as a plumber, and you know the labor and expense of the cleanup after the repair is made. None of that is even an issue with Ezekiel. He is taken out to measure the river formed by this flow of water until in a short distance he cannot cross the river it has grown so deep. And the waters are healing waters returning life to the sea! It is an altogether different experience from what we know. 

And this is but one of the new experiences God has in store for us in the time to come! 

Bucky

The Oversimplified Version

“Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus answered. John 6:43

Once upon a time, I lived in a mansion and I found myself with the common complaint of the thing I wanted always being in another room. Then, I had a larger house and often I complained that the thing I wanted was three feet out of reach. Through the circumstances of life, I moved into a smaller house, and I griped that everything seemed to be just six inches out of reach. The Lord moved me to a hut on the beach; as I sat outside in the beautiful sunset watching the waves break gently on the shore, I hoped one day to have a place to sleep inside since the hut was packed full of my stuff until I had no room for a bed!

You will recognize from experience our tendency to complain over the smallest inconveniences and also a worldly desire to hang onto stuff until it becomes a hindrance. If it is a reason to complain we seek, then life presents all manner of opportunities to gripe, whine, moan, and grumble. As the Israelites proved, we can even grumble so much that God grows weary of it. Gratitude is the answer to our inclination toward the disenchantment of life in this world. There are those times, many of those times, when gratitude must be taken up and put on like a cloak to smother that tendency to be down and grumbly. Sometimes, gratitude might have to be more like a tent we step into in order to cover all the urgent complaining we feel. Then, maybe, we just might need a prayer closet war room to list those moanings on a wall to bring before the Lord in prayer. And perhaps one day the mansion of the heart will grow so much that we take each and every former complaint and instead give thanks to God for each perceived problem. That last may seem an impossible step...

...but it is God's step and He will show us how it is done. Have faith in that!

Bucky

One Friend We Must Believe

And you would be secure, because there is hope;
​​Yes, you would dig around you, and take your rest in safety. Job 11:18

Secure, hope, rest, and safety, this verse sounds good on the surface. However, this is from that famous argument in Job that began with a bad premise: Job was not in fact guilty of any iniquity. The friends of Job waxed eloquent in their attack on him, but they assumed something and refused to believe him. One day a Man of Nazareth proclaimed His disciples friends, and they too assumed some things about Him and refused to believe Him when He told them of His coming execution and resurrection. One even stood up and refused to let the Lord complete His mission, until he was named 'Adversary' and later denied three times that he even knew Jesus of Nazareth. Friends, sometimes you have to wonder at them.

May the Lord God protect us from becoming friends of that type to our Lord Jesus or our brothers and sisters in Christ. Amen.

Bucky

Coincidence or God?

And take the ark of the LORD and place it on the cart and put in a box at its side the figures of gold, which you are returning to him as a guilt offering. Then send it off and let it go its way  and watch. If it goes up on the way to its own land, to Beth-shemesh, then it is he who has done us this great harm, but if not, then we shall know that it is not his hand that struck us; it happened to us by coincidence.  1 Samuel 6:8-9

Coincidence; the occurrence of two or more events at the same time, has been the flip side of the miraculous that we keep watch for daily. Is it God's hand at work in this life or is it coincidence? We may ask that question of a great many interesting events we see in the news and all around us. The Philistines in our story today did a little test and found there was no coincidence involved. Was that test result more or less frightening to them? 

Glory and honor to God our Father!

Bucky

Plans For The Day

So I will cast you out, and your mother who bore you, into another country where you were not born; and there you shall die. Jeremiah 22:26

A fine morning dawned over the capital city, and Coniah the king quietly left the royal suite and went down to his garage. Taking the latest model Mustang from his stable, the king drove down to the boundary road to take in the sunrise as it came up over his kingdom. The machine roared around the curves as Coniah let his pony car eat up the furlongs with its powerful engine. Highway patrolmen respectfully bowed as their in-car computers let them know it was the king out driving and not some joyrider to be pulled over and arrested. For his part, Coniah hardly noticed the cops as he thought of what needed done that day to increase his control over the kingdom and make it more to his liking. First off, that pesky prophet needed to be silenced. Bringing the king's mother into it was going too far! 

Back in the day an expression went around about hitting a person so hard his mother would feel it. God beat us to the expression by quite a few centuries as He sent a message to a king in Jerusalem by Jeremiah the prophet. The king's dear old Ma would be uprooted and taken captive along with him and both would die in another country. One can see how the king might be disinclined to believe this prophecy, or at least wouldn't want it repeated to his mother. While it may be fun to combine an ancient king and a few anachronisms,  no one really wants to bring bad news to his mother. God, in His infinite knowledge, even named the conqueror and people who would do the capturing of the royal family. Coniah's plans for the day, at least that particular day as foretold, would likely change, and his dear old Ma's too. Sorry, Ma, we're going to Babylon!

Today, many people are making plans for their respective days. But today, we all may see that next Babylon arise; the one foretold in the Revelation. Our plans may not be what we thought they would be as the Lord's prophecy marches on toward the end. For those who believe in Jesus though, there is an escape clause we anticipate with joyous praise! 

May our Lord and King be praised forevermore!

Bucky

Woe And Doom? Must Be Monday

Woe to you who put far off the day of doom,
​​Who cause the seat of violence to come near. Amos 6:3

Now it came to pass that Jerusalem saw a time of peace and prosperity. It was in such a time that a man from among the sheepherders was given the word of the Lord, and of course he would need to go to where the words of woe and doom were least welcome: Jerusalem. Fortunately, the background of Amos was well suited to bringing an unwelcome word or two. When God called the people the lost sheep of Israel, He was not conveying a compliment to them. Sheep often reflect the worst aspects of a group of people: slow to recognize danger, yet easily panicked; prone to wander off, but complacent to a fault; and of course they can be weak, blind, stupid, obstinate, rebellious, and about every other derogatory word that can be written. One thing sheep do not do, as far as we know, is to laugh at the person bringing them the message of doom and woe. That scoffing bit seems to be a human characteristic.

Amos did deliver his message from the Lord, and we can read it to this day. The destruction of Jerusalem did come and the scoffers were rounded up and taken to captivity as foretold. The question we might have in this age is: Who's next? Amos was not the only prophecy of great doom and woe. The Revelation, Daniel, the Olivet Discourse, and many other prophecies of the end have not yet come to pass, but we dare not scoff or be complacent as those long-ago sheep of Jerusalem were in the time of Amos.

Live in Christ as we await His return,

Bucky

Post Script: Must be Monday, eh? I resent that! On second thought, it may be that I am more prone to look up words like doom, woe, judgment, et al. on a Monday morning for some reason.

Laughter To Come

Blessed are you who hunger now,
For you shall be filled. Blessed are you who weep now,
For you shall laugh.  Luke 6:21

Tales of sin and woe abound in the Bible. Finding a funny story is not at all easy. It seems like something is missing. Someone ate a fruit that was forbidden to her and shared it with her mate, and then we found many years later that laughter was uncommon in the Bible. Do you suppose there is a connection? The Bible is a serious collection of books for a serious problem: man became separated from his Creator by that one rebellion. The central man in this collection of books, Jesus, came to Earth on a serious mission: to save us from our sin and the punishment it carries. Put away the Bible? Turn to the news of the world? Okay, after reading the news of the Earth, we are now counted among the weeping ones. Good thing we have the promise from our Lord Jesus of laughter to come. It seems so alien to us to just laugh with the Lord in the peace and love of His presence. Sure we laugh at ourselves, each other , the strange antics of politicians, and the comedy of the performer, but how often do we just laugh because we feel the love of the Lord in this life? Still carrying too many of those burdens maybe? Yes, me too.

Weeping over this world, we rejoice in one of the great promises from His word: for you shall laugh.

Bucky

Stay Here?

Trust in the LORD, and do good;
Dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness. Psalm 37:3

Trusting in the Lord has an air of contentment with where we are now. Doing good can be done right where we are now. We can feed on His faithfulness in any place that we may be. Dwell in the land, oh no, means that we stay here?! Imagine using this verse as a command to stay put to this year's graduating class. The outcry would be tremendous as some have already moved out to start their new life by this time in mid-July, others anticipate leaving within a month to begin college, and others are still trying to decide where to move on to. Even in a church the call to a mission field far away has been looked up to, while the call to stay put is sometimes looked down upon as being of lesser faith. After all God only selects the best and most faithful as missionaries because that is what we would do, right? No, no, no, more faith may be required to stay where we are, and the toughest mission may well be to the neighbors who saw us grow up as we know from the ministry of our Lord Jesus in Nazareth. If it is a tough mission we think we need, the Lord can of course provide it far away or right here. As for the greater faith, it is our weakness that brings out the perfection of the Lord's strength as Paul found out when he wanted his thorn removed by the Lord. So, yes, trust in the Lord, do good, and feed on His faithfulness as you dwell in the land!

That last line was really good, almost like a Bible verse!

Bucky

A Tested Love

Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. James 5:16

I confess to you that I have harbored angry thoughts over an irritant in my work. This irritant is a man and he has an irritating way that many have come to recognize and toss out of their workplaces, no doubt to their great relief. Part of my irritation comes from frustration over what I see as unbelief in Jesus and the necessity of salvation. Hold that man's spiritual toes to the fire and he will deflect into a lengthy rambling story about himself. He is also a scoffer, saying things like, "Isn't Jesus supposed to come back and fix everything up right?" As though the current world situation is the Lord's fault. I could weary your reading with much more, but just know that this man acts quite like the Judeans from our Lord's time who knew about God but believed in their own righteousness and refused to believe in the Messiah as He stood right in front of them.

What hurts more about this is that Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 13 that love is not irritable or resentful, and as I have struggled to love this man, I have been both too many times. So, yes I am looking to you for prayers and solutions as I confess that I am too weak in this thing. May the Lord Jesus guide us all in this matter of tested love... and some days I think it is a severe test indeed!

Love in Christ,

Bucky

No Pot Of Gold?

The rainbow shall be in the cloud, and I will look on it to remember the everlasting covenant between God and every living creature of all flesh that is on the earth. Genesis 9:16

The rainbow we see in the clouds came to be when God made a covenant with all the flesh of the Earth. There was no performance clause on our side, only a promise from our Lord God to not let the waters become a flood that would destroy all life again. Somewhere in the years between the giving of that covenant and our times, a pot of gold became involved at the end of this rainbow. How did that happen? It is of course easy to see how greed and lust could become involved when our fallen nature is taken into account. It is as if the promise of God to not destroy all flesh again by flood is somehow not good enough without a little worldly lucre to sweeten the deal. This sort of behavior points us to the reason for the rainbow in the sky, which was not for our reminder but God's! The Lord states in His promise that, "I will look on it to remember..." Why should this be necessary for our Lord who remembers and knows all things? Is it that we are going to fall into that same behavior that brought the flood? It has happened in Israel in the Old Testament, and in Rome in the New Testament, and many other kingdoms of the world since Bible times, and even now is happening all around us. Our pot of gold is that each day God looks upon His rainbow and forbears once again to flood the earth to wipe out the rampant sin.

Praise God that we can have forgiveness of that sin as each of us comes to believe in Jesus!

Bucky

Where The Noise Is

You who are full of noise,
​​A tumultuous city, a joyous city?
​​Your slain men are not slain with the sword,
​​Nor dead in battle.  Isaiah 22:2

The prophecy in Isaiah is about Jerusalem, but reading this verse we could easily see it bearing on each of us. Inside the mind we are full of noise, sometimes tumultuous, sometimes joyous, and sometimes with those worried visions of death for us or our loved ones. Indeed if you are among those of a more introverted and less garrulous nature then the noise is nearly all kept inside the mind. That does not mean that we worry less, it just doesn't pass our lips so often as others. So when it comes to this noise of worried thoughts, we are just as guilty as the more talkative and outgoing types. The men of the mind do not actually die with the sword in battle, but they are worried to death. All of which, spoken or only thought, puts us in direct disobedience of our Lord's commands to not worry. Let us be full of the noise of praise and gratitude to our Lord Jesus; a more joyous noise than the tumult of worry.

In the Lord Jesus Christ,

Bucky

Giving Us The Word!

For from the rising of the sun, even to its going down,
My name shall be great among the Gentiles;
In every place incense shall be offered to My name,
And a pure offering;
For My name shall be great among the nations,”
Says the LORD of hosts.  Malachi 1:11

Rejoice! The name of the Lord our God has become great among the Gentiles and we are glad to carry on the glory of God! The writer of Genesis 10, looking way ahead in prophecy, tells of the languages, families, and nations that formed from the sons of Japheth whose father was Noah. The term Gentiles later in the Bible came to mean pretty much anyone or nation who was not Israel or Jewish. We gladly accept the name because as Israel rejected God and later His Son, Jesus, the good news of salvation and grace by faith came to us Gentiles by way of the word of God and the disciples and apostles carrying it to the far lands where our ancestors lived. The Spirit of God moved in the hearts of those mothers and fathers who would over the course of time produce you and me. We benefit from the good news of Jesus in a manner similar to those spiritual ancestors of ours as recorded in the Acts:

Now when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of the Lord. And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed. (13:48)

Gracious and loving is our Lord God, who gave to us the Word!

Bucky

One Big Heel

I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented your members as slaves of uncleanness, and of lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves of righteousness for holiness.  Romans 6:19

I would use that dude in ancient times who had only one physical weakness, an Achilles heel so to speak, as an example if only I could remember his name to look up his story. There are those days in which we might feel that we are one big heel by way of physical weakness, and even more so in terms of our moral fortitude. While admitting to physical weakness becomes easier with age and the lowered expectations thereof, coming to face that moral weakness is less easy without some proof. The law in the Bible is of course the gold standard in showing us our moral weakness, especially when we get to that part where our Lord Jesus tells the disciples that simply thinking of sin counts against us too. To our great relief, the Bible does not stop there but goes on to tell us how Jesus fixed this heel-ness we have by way of paying Himself to satisfy the judgment of God upon our sin. We do not have to make that turnabout from lawlessness to holiness in our weakness but do it in His strength. The weak ones enjoy the powerful enabling of God's Holy Spirit given to us by our Lord Jesus. 

Obviously the one little verse I picked out for today does not show all of this. It is there in Paul's letter to the Romans and the gospels of Jesus Christ. Read and study the word of God! 

Love in Christ to you on this day,

Bucky

Think You Have A Tough Job?

So Ahab summoned Obadiah, who supervised the palace. (Now Obadiah was a very loyal follower of the LORD).  1 Kings 18:3

You and I can easily think back to a job or position that we did not like, not so much for the work but due to the supervisor. Here is a man called Obadiah, who we are glad to call brother because of one important reference: the Bible states that he was a very loyal follower of the Lord. Obadiah had a great job too, palace supervisor, or at least it would have been but for one four-letter word that belongs with every other four-letter word we try to avoid in conversation, Ahab. As supervisor of the palace and very loyal follower of the Lord, Obadiah was likely a delight to work with and for. However, along with Ahab came his wife and queen, Jezebel. We know from the histories that this was a woman who hated, and she loved to hate the prophets of the Lord. Jezebel likely got up each morning thinking of ways to show that certain love of hers to all who would cheer her on in her murderous ways. Obadiah probably didn't proselytize at work. Obadiah may have got up each morning wondering to the Lord why he had been put in this position as chief servant to the greatest haters of the Lord the world had ever seen And you thought your work was tough.  

Perhaps your work position is similar to Obadiah's, but we know some good news for those suffering today. Jezebel and Ahab are gone. The Lord lives! Followers of the Lord are welcomed daily into the eternal rest of their Lord and Savior. For any suffering, our patient hope is in Christ the Lord!

Bucky

Suddenly All Night

Joshua therefore came upon them suddenly, having marched all night from Gilgal. Joshua 10:9

Suddenly for one side meant an all night march for Joshua's soldiers. Often it is the case that a sudden happening for someone is a long march of labor for another. Other times it is that there is plenty of notice for a thing, but it still seems sudden because of the long wait. The events foretold in the Revelation come suddenly, but the prophecy was written about 95AD, giving even the sleepiest of us plenty of warning. We can see how this happens as centuries have gone by with people much like us living, learning of the Revelation, and then going to their rest in Christ without seeing the foretold judgments come to pass. However, as we well know from the scriptures, while we are getting sleepy waiting, the Lord is busy preparing His great and awful day when those judgments will come on the Earth. A bit of warning for our fellow humans who do not yet believe in Jesus or His Revelation is not out of place lest they suffer the 'suddenly' side of the dire events to come.

It is interesting that while looking for references to the sudden events of the Revelation, God gave me a verse from Joshua, a book way back in time. In this story, the coming of a terrible hailstorm - yes, a plague of hail - kills more enemy soldiers than the Israelites do with their swords. And what comes in the last plague poured out in Revelation 16:21? Yes, big hailstones - another plague of hail.

God is in control,

Bucky