Posts Tagged ‘Christian Living’

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Hoarding Money

Thursday, March 15th, 2012

hoarding-money“I don’t give a flip about the poor. I think they are lazy frauds that beg off people just to go buy booze. Why on earth should I help them?” I declared to my husband.

After doing a Beth Moore Bible study on the book of James, I was aghast at how many Scriptures command us to help the poor. Helping the poor is something commanded by Jesus, James, and tons of other Scriptures. I was floored and horrified because I have never heard a sermon about helping the poor, and I don’t care one whit about them. What is wrong with my hardened heart?

(Here are some verses about helping the poor: Exodus 22:21-27, Leviticus 19:9-10, Leviticus 25:35-38, Deuteronomy 14:28-29, Deuteronomy 15:7-11, Deuteronomy 24:17-22, 1 Samuel 2:7, Nehemiah 5:6-13, Psalm 12:5, Psalm 112:5, Proverbs 14:21, Proverbs 14:31, Proverbs 17:5, Proverbs 19:17, Proverbs 22:16, Proverbs 28:8, Proverbs 28:27, Isaiah 3:14, Isaiah 58:5-7, Isaiah 61:1-2, Ezekiel 18:5-9, Amos 5:11, Matthew 19:21, Luke 6:34-35, 38, Luke 14:12-14, Galatians 2:10, James 2:1-7, Revelation 3:17.)

As I was reading the book of James, I was convicted that we live “in luxury and in self-indulgence” in this country, and meanwhile other believers are working hard and don’t have enough to feed their families. In the body of Christ, we ought to fill each other’s needs instead of overpampering ourselves. My husband has the gift of giving. If he sees a need, he automatically fills the need of the other person. I am not talking about professional beggars that are liars. What I’m talking about is interconnecting with other believers in the body of Christ, whether at a local church, or with other homeschoolers, or with friends. These people aren’t lazy and shouldn’t be lumped in with frauds.

I do NOT believe the poor should get help from the government (aside from not having to pay taxes), because then they feel a sense of entitlement and demand it, and the majority stop working. That’s sin. If someone doesn’t work, neither shall he eat. (II Thessalonians 3:10) If someone doesn’t provide for his family, he is worse than an unbeliever. (I Timothy 5:8) But if someone is working hard and still can’t feed his children, and you know about it and do nothing, you are guilty of sin. Read James 2:15-17: “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace, be warmed and filled,’ without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.” God says your faith is dead if you see someone in need (for real), and you don’t help them.

We enjoy hoarding and piling up all of our money at the bank. There is nothing wrong with being rich, since Abraham was rich, and so was Job, and they were both godly people. But both Abraham and Job gave to other people and didn’t just hoard it to amass riches.

This whole idea of hoarding money reminds me of the man in Scripture who had full granaries and worked super hard to become rich, only to have his soul required of him that very night. “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'” (Luke 12:20)

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Posted in Church, Creative Finances | 6 Comments »

How to Overcome Temptation

Monday, March 5th, 2012

how-to-overcome-temptation

I was sitting one morning with my coffee, looking out the window, praying, when my daughter came and sat beside me in the dark.

She blurted out, “I’m glad you put the nutcracker away. When I saw it in the living room, I wanted to play with it. When you weren’t looking, I played with it until it broke.”

“You should learn how to overcome temptation. Just because you see something doesn’t mean you have to do it. Just think of something else, and you will take your mind off it,” I replied.

“What if I can’t think of anything else?”

“There are millions of things to think about. I’m sure you can think of something, like oceans or monkeys.” My daughter giggled at the thought of monkeys.

Whenever I recognize a temptation, I just throw out the thought and replace it with another thought. Better yet, put your mind on Christ. This is how you take every thought captive.

Later I talked to my husband about my conversation with my daughter, and he said, “Another good way to resist temptation is to go away from the temptation.” He then proceeded to tell me about a study that was done, where children were put into a room with a large present, and they were told that what was inside was wonderful. Then the adult left the room, and the child was alone with the present. In almost every case, the child couldn’t resist temptation and ripped open the present to see what was inside. But there were the few, the one or two percent, who were able to resist temptation. What did they do? One of the children started singing to distract herself. Another little girl got her chair and turned it around so that the present was behind her, so she wouldn’t have to look at the temptation. I found this study very interesting.

There is always a way out of temptation, so that we don’t have to sin: “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.” (I Corinthians 10:13) This has nothing to do with horrible things that happen to us that are beyond our ability to endure: “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life.” (II Corinthians 1:8) If the apostle Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, says that God gives us trials that are beyond our ability to endure, then he’s not talking about temptation.

Don’t ever feel that you have to give in to temptation. You don’t. Or if you start to sin, you can stop abruptly. You don’t have to continue sinning once you realize you’re sinning.

“Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7

“Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” II Corinthians 10:5

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Posted in Christian Living, Parenting | 12 Comments »

Thankful in the Small Things

Thursday, March 1st, 2012

Recently one of my children got sick with a flu which was somewhat explosive. There was diarrhea everywhere in the bathroom. The first thing I thought to myself was that I was thankful that this child had never had a pooping problem. This was, to my knowledge, the first time I’ve cleaned up poop since this child was potty trained years ago. Secondly, as I went to get the wipes, I was grateful that we had wipes, because we went a lot of months without wipes. Our family decided to buy them again because they are great for cleaning counters and bathrooms and countless other things.

Oddly, this was just days after I had posted my “Anger and Potty Training” article, as if the enemy once again would accuse me before God of not having learned my lesson. I’m smiling because God boasted in me. He knew I would pass the test. That is why He granted permission for the trial to occur. I love reading the book of Job, because God only gives us trials that He knows we will pass. And we always pass them, sooner or later.

So I scrubbed the poop for probably half an hour, trying to breathe through my mouth. I wasn’t angry, which is what my reaction used to be toward cleaning this sort of thing. I just calmly endured. I felt the presence of the Holy Spirit. It had to be the Holy Spirit, because to have joy in the middle of a yucky circumstance is impossible, and yet there I was, feeling joy.

Two days later I had a high fever. I had not felt this bad in years. I couldn’t get up without feeling like I was going to crack my skull on the ground. I thought to myself, “I can’t function. I am completely helpless. I wonder if I should call Alan to come home from work, because there is no way I can take care of the kids.” But my husband had taken the previous day off to do a webinar on the Homeschool Channel with me, and if he has a day off, I would like it to count for something. I decided against it.

I told the children to pour their own cereal. Thankfully I had trained the older two kids, 10 and 11, how to pour their own cereal. So they helped their younger brother and sister to have breakfast. For lunch they were all able to make sandwiches. I was thankful that I had trained them how to make their own lunch. Off and on throughout the day, my daughter would come into my room and hug me. Oh, I forgot to say that all four of my children were also sick. But I was grateful for my daughter’s hugs, her checking in on me. One time I asked her to get her brother, who brought me a yogurt container so that I could eat breakfast. My children took care of me, and I got through the day. I was thankful for the fact that they didn’t fight that day, probably because they all had low-grade fevers and were mostly watching DVD’s.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that you can be thankful for something that looks like misery on the surface of it. It’s a tailor-made circumstance through which you can do the right thing. My greatest desire is to be transformed into the image of Christ, so if I can stop thrashing about and yield to God in my circumstance, the growth will happen at an accelerated pace. And then it becomes easier and easier, because the closer you are to Christ, the more joy you have in the midst of your circumstances.

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Posted in Christian Living | 8 Comments »

Forgetting What’s in the Mirror

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012

in-the-mirrorPride blinds us and keeps us from following God. We live in a state of self-deception, thinking that just because we see something in Scripture and agree with it, we’re following it. Especially for people who have followed God a long time, we rest on our past laurels, how God transformed us in the past, not realizing that if God is not transforming us NOW, that we are not really as mature as we think we are. Often new converts are following God more closely than we are, but we show contempt for them because we’ve been past that stage for so long. God wants to soften our hearts so that we will be in a continuous state of yielding to Him. True humility is beautiful.

We don’t want to confess sin to each other for fear of what other people will think of us, even though Scripture commands us to do so. I read a sweet article about a woman being convicted about lying. The automatic reaction of my heart was that I was beyond that, because I don’t struggle with that particular sin. This is the reaction of a prideful person. This is ugly, and God is not pleased. So what if we don’t struggle with that particular sin? We struggle with others, if we are honest with ourselves.

In fact, as believers, when we look like we are sinning and far from God because of a struggle with sin, that’s often when we are drawing closer to God than ever, going through a gargantuan growth spurt in our walk with God. And yet we label these people as immature because they are being honest about their sin.

Let’s take, for example, the time I raged at God over potty training. How ridiculous, says the person who has never gone through that trial. They look down on me, thinking me stupid and trivial. Yet if I told them my rape testimony and how I never raged at God about that, they would clap their hand over their mouth, shocked at God’s glory shining out of my life miraculously through such an event.

So why don’t we have the guts to say what is really going on in our lives, even though it makes us look stupid and immature? Why did I never link to my “Anger and Potty Training” article that I wrote two years ago? Why was I embarrassed by it? That trial transformed me, so that I was able to perform a disgusting task with joy. And God gets all the glory because my behavior looks so yucky. For crying out loud, what gives me the gall to rage at God? Honestly, the anger was already there, and the moment I was honest with God was the moment He changed me. I didn’t want to admit that I was so furious about it. The trial of potty training was put there by God to sanctify me. God was concerned about my reaction to the trial, NOT to the potty training itself.

Because of my obedience to God in posting an extremely embarrassing article (and having to crucify my pride to do it), I’ve gotten e-mails from sweet mothers of small children, thanking me profusely for posting it. Why? Because they felt alone. They knew that their anger over potty training was wrong, but they didn’t know what to do about it. Express your frustration to God. God is NOT surprised. Job ranted at God, and God never rebuked him for it. (I am not saying that it’s godly to rage at God; I’m saying that when you are dealing honestly with God full blast, God will transform you through your pain.) Many people who have lost children have initially shaken their fists at God with rage (because God is in control of the universe and could have prevented it), but then they continue to throw themselves in God’s direction, and God transforms them and draws them closer to Himself. If you look at a snapshot of the person raging, you might look down on them as being spiritually immature when the absolute opposite is happening – a gigantic spiritual growth spurt. Allow people to look ugly for a minute. Grant them that grace. God Himself knows their hearts and grants them this grace, so why shouldn’t we?

We’re commanded to boast about our weaknesses. Why? Because God gets glory. Spiritual growth looks ugly BEFORE the transition to a greater state of holiness.

Wisdom is married to humility. I want to hang around people who are humble and wise. God, grant me the humility to love people for real, and to be honest about my own sin. May I never put my own image before God’s glory.

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Posted in Christian Living | 2 Comments »

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