JESUS SPEAKING

             “You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’  But I say to you that whoever looks at a woman to lust for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart.  If your right eye causes you to sin pluck it out and cast it from you, for it is more profitable for you that one of your members perish than for your whole body to be cast in to hell” (Mathew 5: 27-30)

INSPIRED THOUGHTS

                In the Old Testament God told the Israelites that they weren’t to commit adultery.  The focus was on the outward action.  But Jesus does something unheard of; with the authority of God he adds to what was commanded by God in the Old Testament.  Jesus makes the motivation in the heart equal to the action itself.  A person no longer needed to murder his neighbor physically; instead, a strong hatred for another person was the same as murder in the eyes of God.  A person no longer needed to sleep with his neighbor’s wife; a man needed only to look at his neighbor’s wife strongly with a deep desire for her sexually, and God counted that desire to be the same as the physical act of sex.  So what is the heart?  The heart is a place deep down inside of every human being that motivates them; a place that is secret; a place where a person hides their fears, worries, and intentions, but not from God.  God wanted originally to dwell within the hearts of his people.  Instead, they built a temple, and asked him to dwell there.  He wanted their hearts, but they only wanted to give him their actions.  Jesus again redirects everything back to the heart.  He identifies the eyes as a tool that can be used to lust, and tells them to pluck out their eyes if they are causing a person to sin.  He draws a parallel between the eternal and the temporal.  Those things which last forever are far more important than any pleasures a person may indulge in on this earth.  If one places an emphasis on the things in this world, they lose sight of the things that are important in the world to come.  For example, a person can desire money, and so they put their careers before love for their families.  They spend more time at the office than they do at home.  They grow distant from taking care of and nurturing the gift God has given them in their wives.

                When a man receives a wife from God, he is supposed to take care of her, and to love her, and to not commit adultery.  Pornography is adultery.  Pornography is not just a passing glance; it’s not a momentary unconscious glance at a woman that can’t be controlled.  If you are out in the community, and you are a man, although you should try to not look at any women, it is sometimes impractical.  The Pharisees during the time of Jesus would walk around with their heads down everywhere they went to make sure they never looked at a woman.  They would run in to objects and people.  If you live in a monastery, you might be able to avoid looking at a woman, but then you would be useless in reaching other people in the world around you; how could you minister to those who were lost.  Lusting is looking at a woman to desire after her; this is a sustained, repeated, or prolonged focus.  It’s not a thought, or imaginary idea, it’s filling your head and heart with a strong desire for something, which Jesus makes clear here pertains to the eyes (Note:  if you have a wife, lusting after her is not only good, it’s Godly.  You should desire to look at your wife naked, and she should want to do the same with you.)  Pornography destroys marriages, not to mention lives.  Ted Bundy, the day before he died was interviewed.  When asked where it all started, he said that he began to look at the pornography he would find in trash cans.  He saw violent pornography, and from then on he continued to progress down a road that led him to his violent rape and murder of many women.  Pornography is a pathway away from God, away from a wife, and toward something that is not God’s will for a man’s life.

                Today there are many who are addicted to pornography; they can’t seem to stop lusting after women they don’t even know.  Many don’t understand the damage that it is doing in their relationship with God, and with others.  Giving it up can be difficult, but with God’s help, with prayer, and with earnest effort and accountability to others, and to God, what seems impossible, can become possible.  God can take away this desire to lust, if, and only if, a person is willing to let Him.

                “Lord Heavenly Father, we ask and pray that You make us pure in heart, and convict our hearts of any lusting that might be going on in us.  We pray that You will help us to make the changes that need to be made.  If any of us are struggling with addiction to pornography, or any other kind of lusting, remove it from our lives, and give us victory in this area, that we can better serve You, in all that we do.  We love you Lord, we praise you, and we thank you, and we ask and pray all of these things, in Jesus Christ’s name.  Amen.”  God bless all of you.

JESUS SPEAKING

                “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector.  The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you that I am not like other men—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.  ‘I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I possess.’  And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not so much as raise his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me a sinner!’  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted” (Luke 18: 10-14.)

INSPIRED THOUGHTS

                The Pharisees were the rigid religious leaders of the day.  They loathed sinners, and they loathed the impure.  They became angry when they heard that Jesus was eating with sinners (those who didn’t behave in Godly ways.)  The tax-collectors earned a living by cheating the people.  A tax-collector survived off of whatever amount of money they charged above the normal taxes.  So they were seen as traitors and thieves.  This was an illustration about humility.  The Pharisee believed that because he had done so many good things, he was righteous.  The tax collector however, feared God, and held God in high esteem; he couldn’t even lift his eyes up toward God, and was angry with himself for not having measured up to God’s standards.  In his reverence he asked God to show him mercy.  The one who was a screw-up was more acceptable to God than was the person who had been doing all of the right things, because the screw-up honored God and not himself.  One man exalted God, the other man exalted himself.  Jesus said the one who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

                In high school, I never liked to run in track; I pole-vaulted, but I never liked to run.  I avoided it like the plague.  I knew I wasn’t that fast of a sprinter, and I didn’t want anyone to see my weakness.  One time my coach told me I had to run or I would get kicked off of the team.  Everyone had to run, and it became common knowledge that I was disobeying the coach.  When I eventually ran, I lost horribly; someone later told me, “I heard Triganowen beat you,” some sophomore kid who wasn’t a starter on the football team.  Man did I feel less than low.  I was prideful, just like the Pharisee in this scripture.  Interestingly enough, on that same track team there was a boy named ‘Billy.’  He was mentally disabled.  He could run, but he couldn’t run fast.  His parents would drop him off for practice.  He wore coke-bottle glasses and had buck teeth.  He couldn’t carry on a conversation very well either.  He was an oddity to most people, because he showed up every day, and he worked hard to run faster.  He practiced to improve his speed even though it was at a snail’s pace; we knew he would never place in any race, but he would run for a different reason.  One day, the word went out, Billy was running in an event.  He ran, and as he did, people began to gather, and run beside him, and cheer him on.  The other teams were looking over at all of the excitement, but they didn’t understand what was happening.  This one little kid had an effect on my heart and on everyone on our team in a way that none of us had had on each other.  I now know that it was the humility in Billy that we were honoring.  Because he was weak but tried his best, we honored him.

                We as well as Christians should show similar humility.  We should never be focused on our own righteousness or on how good we are compared with others because in the end we are all nothing next to the righteousness of God.  We can’t honor God and honor ourselves at the same time.  God honors those who are humble, and he humbles those who are full of pride and self-righteousness.  Be the humble person.  Remember how merciful God has been to you, a ‘lowly sinner.’  Think of how Great God’s love for you is, in that, while you were still a sinner he died for you, and you will know the love and the joy of an all powerful God living within your heart.

                “Father, if there are areas of self-righteousness in us, we ask that You please reveal them and remove them from us.  Help us to lift you up, and to honor You and put You in the place of honor in our lives.  Help us also Lord, to not look down on the others, but to reach out to them in love.  We thank You Father, we love You, and we praise You, and we ask and pray all of these things in Jesus Christ’s name.  Amen.”  God bless all of you.

JESUS SPEAKING

Then he said to his disciples, “Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; nor about the body, what you will put on.  Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.  Consider the ravens, for they neither sow nor reap, which have neither storehouse nor barn; and God feeds them.  Of how much more value are you than the birds?  And which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?  If you then are not able to do the least, why are you anxious for the rest?  Consider the lilies, how they grow:  they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these” (Luke 12: 22-27.)

INSPIRED THOUGHTS

                Jesus commanded his disciples not to worry.  What is worry?  Worry is a feeling of discomfort in the present that is produced by the expectation of some future pain (By the way, this is the opposite of hope; hope is a present feeling of elation brought about by the expectation of some future pleasure.)  Many were worrying about not having what they needed in the future.  Jesus identified two sources of worry common to human beings; food and clothing.  He presented two animals victorious over their fear in these areas; birds and lilies.  Birds lived in nests, but stored nothing in them.  Birds foraged daily and took with them only what would fit in their stomachs.  Unlike birds, those whom Jesus was speaking too were run on fear; fear of not having enough tomorrow would drive them to horde and strive to gain as much as they could today; in their pursuits they had abandoned truly living life the way that God had desired them to live.  The second organism Jesus pointed too was the Lillie.   The Lilly was a commonly held symbol of beauty in the Middle East.  Jesus said, the lillies don’t toil (work hard), nor spin (sow on a sowing loom), and yet they were dressed more beautifully than King Solomon (Solomon was a king of Israel, and by many accounts the richest man who had ever lived.)  His clothing was the finest money could buy.  The least of God’s works were far better than man’s best efforts.  The people were so focused on providing for themselves, they missed out on what was truly important.  They were ruled by fear instead of faith.  They were focused on the excesses and not the necessities.  They believed they were in control.

                How can worry bring about sick and unhealthy living.  Many people have heard of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.)  The symptoms of the disorder consist of two parts.  First, there is an internal feeling of uneasiness or discomfort (anxiety) that arises out of fear (in severe cases the fear is completely irrational.)  The fear of some future calamity stirs the person to take actions (compulsions) that help them to avoid said calamity.  However, most of the time, the compulsive actions taken, serve only to give the person a false sense of security, or an illusion of control.  For example, someone may have a fear of getting sick, so they believe that if they wash their hands 18 times, they will avoid getting sick (but if a person breaths on them they may catch a cold anyways.)  Some people have allowed fear to rule their lives so much, they can’t even leave the house, or do fun things with others.  Some people work 80 hours a week, and put everything they have in to a 401K account, fearing they will not have enough for retirement, and two days before they retire they die.  Now there are others, who have come to know God, and to follow the teachings of Jesus, and they know a freedom from fear; they focus on today, and the person sitting in front of them.  The important things in life begin to be their focus, and they learn to place all of their trust in God, and in his mighty power, and not in themselves.

                Today, control is an illusion (almost all things are outside of our control), and if we desire to follow Jesus Christ, we need to give up seeking to provide for ourselves in areas where only He can provide.  If we focus on things that we fear we will lose the peace that Jesus provides to those who trust Him.  When you feel yourself getting scared, or anxious, simply step back, relax, and remember this scripture.  Praying can help as well.  God is in control of nearly every aspect of your life, and he handles your future so you can live in today.  Focus without worry on what today has for you, and you will know a peace that surpasses all understanding.  There is such a great freedom in knowing that God is your provider, and that he can always be trusted.

                “Lord Heavenly Father, we ask and pray that You help us to stop living in the fear of tomorrow, or the fear of anything other than You.  Help us Lord to know deep down in our hearts that You will provide for us, and use us today to do Your will.  Help us Father to focus on the basic things in life, and to not focus on the excesses that can distract us from serving You.  Give us Your peace, and make our hearts and minds still, knowing that we can trust You in all things.  We love You Father, we thank You, and we praise You, and we ask and pray all of these things in Jesus Christ’s name.  Amen.”  God bless all of you.