Beautiful God

The Sunday morning message given in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on July 23, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Romans 11:33--12:2.

            From the time human beings were capable of thought, we have tried to understand God.  Who God is.  What God does.  Why God does what God does.  How God does what God does.  How God can possibly be all the things we say God is.  There have been, literally, millions of books written trying to answer those and other questions about God.  There have also been magazine articles, movies, TV shows, youtube videos, and any number of other things published in which humans have tried to understand God.

            It’s a natural human impulse.  We try to understand God for lots of reasons.  For one thing, we worship God, and we want to understand just who it is that we worship.  For another, we look at all the chaos and confusion, and we want to believe that it makes sense somehow, so we try to understand why God would allow things to be the way they are.  We also want to believe that God is going to use all this chaos and confusion for good in the end, and we try to understand how God is going to do that.  We want to know what happens after we die, and so we try to understand God so that we can understand what heaven will be like.  And on and on and on, all these reasons why we try to understand God.

            There’s nothing wrong with that, really.  It’s certainly not a sin.  As I said, it’s a natural human impulse.  But while there’s nothing wrong with it, it’s also not a very productive thing for us to do.  It’s really kind of pointless, because it’s impossible.  There is no way that any human being can ever understand God.  God is completely and totally beyond our understanding.

            As the Apostle Paul put it in our reading for today, “Oh the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable His judgments, and His paths beyond tracing out!  Who has known the mind of the Lord?  Or who has been His counselor?”

            The wisdom and knowledge of God are deeper than we can ever imagine.  We cannot know the mind of the Lord.  Not because God does not want us to know His mind, but because our minds are simply not well-enough developed to understand the mind of God.  It would be like trying to explain advanced calculus to a three-year-old.  Advanced calculus makes sense–if you’ve studied enough mathematics to understand it.  But if you have not, it makes no sense whatsoever.

            That’s how the mind of God is.  God makes perfect sense–if our minds were developed enough to understand God.  But they’re not.  The only one whose mind is well-enough developed to understand God is–God.  So God makes perfect sense to God.  God just does not always make sense to us, because we don’t know all the things God knows, we cannot see all the things God sees, and our minds are not developed enough to understand all the things God understands.

            But still we try.  We try to understand God.  And so we come up with all kinds of lists to describe who God is.  God is love.  God is mercy.  God is almighty.  God is all-powerful.  God is all-wise.  God is all-seeing.  God is everywhere.  God is grace.  God is holy.  Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

            But you know, there’s one thing God is that usually does not make those lists.  And it’s another reason we cannot understand God.  Our contemporary song this morning alluded to it.  God is beautiful.

            Have you ever thought of God that way?  I have to admit, I rarely do.  But I should.  We all should.  Because God is beautiful.

            In saying God is beautiful, I’m not talking about physical beauty.  God may be beautiful in that way, too.  In fact, I suspect God is.  God certainly understands physical beauty, because God created a world with so much of it.  And we are really fortunate to live in the part of the world we do, where there is so much physical beauty.  The beauty of the river.  The beauty of the sunrises and sunsets.  The beauty of the clouds.  The beauty of the animals and birds.  God created a lot of physical beauty, so it certainly is possible that God possesses physical beauty.  But since no one has seen God, we cannot say that for sure.

            But God is definitely beautiful in many other senses of the word.  Listen to the definition of the word beauty, according to dictionary.com, and I think you’ll agree that it all applies to God.  “Possessing qualities that give great pleasure to see, hear, or think about.  Delighting the senses of the mind.  Something extraordinary or incredible.”

            That all describes God, or at least it should.  It should give us great pleasure to hear about or think about God.  God should delight the senses of our minds.  And God certainly is extraordinary or incredible.  By the very definition of the word, God is beautiful.

            And the fact that God is beautiful is another reason why we cannot understand God.  You don’t understand beauty.  In fact, trying to understand beauty misses the point.  Beauty is not there to be understood.  Beauty is there to be appreciated.  Beauty is there to give us pleasure.  Beauty is about love, not understanding.

            Paul goes on to tell us how we should live in appreciation and love of God’s beauty.  He says, “Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God–this is your true and proper worship.  Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”

            When Paul says “offer your bodies as a living sacrifice”, what he’s saying is that everything about our lives on earth should be dedicated to God.  Everything we do should be dedicated to God.  Everything we say should be dedicated to God.  And not just the public things we do, either.  Yes, we should love our neighbors and make our public acts dedicated to God, but it’s not just that.  Everything we do or say, even when no one else is around, even when no one else will ever know what we’ve done–those things, too, should be dedicated to God.  That’s the only way we can truly and properly worship God.

            And in fact, it goes deeper than that.  Not only should our actions and words be dedicated to God, our very thoughts and feelings should be dedicated to God.  That’s what Paul means when he says, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.”  Because that’s where our words and actions come from, right?  They come from our mind.  They come from what we think and how we feel.  

We cannot dedicate our words and actions to God unless we have dedicated our thoughts and feelings to God.  Yes, we can do the right thing, outwardly, for a while, even if our hearts and minds are not in it.  But eventually, our true self is going to come out.  Our true thoughts and feelings will make themselves known.  We cannot help it.  And if our true thoughts and feelings are not holy and pleasing to God, then our words and actions will not be holy and pleasing to God, either.

But our true thoughts and feelings will only be holy and pleasing to God if, as Paul says, we are transformed.  That transformation can only come through the power of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot transform ourselves.  We need to do our part, but we cannot transform ourselves just by an act of our own will.  We need to open ourselves up to God’s will.  We need to open ourselves up to the power of God’s Holy Spirit.

How do we do that?  By prayer.  I know that tends to be the pastor’s answer to everything, but I really mean it.  I believe prayer has great power.  I’ve seen that power in my own life.  Not that I’m perfect–I’m nowhere close to perfect.  But I think I’m better than I once was.  I don’t think my mind has been transformed–but I feel like I’ve at least taken a very few small steps down that road.  And however far I’ve gotten, it did not happen because of my own will.  It happened because I prayed for God’s Holy Spirit to help me be the person God wants me to be.

And in this and most things, I’m no better than anyone else.  If God’s Holy Spirit can help me, God’s Holy Spirit can help you, too.  So pray.  And I’m not just talking about a brief, five-second prayer.  I mean, if that’s all you need to get transformed by God’s Holy Spirit, then that’s great.  But for me, it takes time.  It takes repeatedly asking for God’s Holy Spirit to transform me.  Not because God needs to be reminded, but because I do.  I need to remind myself to make it a priority in my life to allow God’s Holy Spirit to transform my mind, to help me overcome my sinful nature, to help me have thoughts and feelings that are holy and pleasing to God, so that my words and actions can also be holy and pleasing to God.  

And again, I’m not saying I’ve gotten there yet.  I have a long way to go.  But as they say, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.  I may have nine hundred ninety-nine miles to go, but that’s still better than a thousand.  The point is not how far we’ve gone or how fast we’re moving.  The point is that we’re making progress.  The point is that we are dedicating ourselves to God, transforming ourselves, with God’s help, into the people God wants us to be.

We don’t have to understand God.  It’s impossible anyway.  God’s awesomeness and beauty cannot be understood by humans.  It can only be appreciated and loved and loved and worshiped.  So let’s do that.  Let’s ask God’s Holy Spirit to transform our minds, so we can dedicate our lives to God.  As Paul says, that is true and proper worship. 

 

Loving Alike

The Sunday night message in the Gettysburg United Methodist church.  July 16, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Romans 10:1-13.

One of the things that makes the United Methodist church different from a lot of other denominations is that we allow for a lot of differences of opinion.  We have very few things that you have to agree to in order to be a United Methodist.  The membership requirements for being a United Methodist are contained in one paragraph of the United Methodist Book of Discipline.  At the risk of boring you, I’m going to read it to you:

When persons unite as professing members with a local United Methodist church, they profess their faith in God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth; in Jesus Christ his only Son, and in the Holy Spirit.  Thus, they make known their desire to live their daily lives as disciples of Jesus Christ.  They covenant together with God and with the members of the local church to keep the vows which are a part of the order of confirmation and reception into the Church.

And here’s what those vows are:

1.  To renounce the spiritual forces of wickedness, reject the evil powers of the world, and repent of their sins;

2.  To accept the freedom and power God gives them to resist evil, injustice, and oppression;

3.  To confess Jesus Christ as Savior, put their whole trust in his grace, and promise to serve him as their Lord.

4.  To remain faithful members of Christ’s holy church and serve as Christ’s representatives in the world;

5.  To be loyal to The United Methodist Church and do all in their power to strengthen its ministries;

6.  To faithfully participate in its ministries by their prayers, their presence, their gifts, their service, and their witness;

7.  To receive and profess the Christian faith as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.

That’s it.  That’s all you have to do to be a member of the United Methodist church.  We don’t have a lengthy catechism you have to memorize.  We don’t have a laundry list of things you have to agree to.  If you do agree to those things I just read, you can be a member of the United Methodist church.  It’s that simple.

            Now, that’s not to say the United Methodist church does not take stands on things.  It does.  It takes stands on all sorts of things.  It takes stands on theological issues, it takes stands on spiritual issues, it takes stands on social issues, sometimes it takes stands on political issues.  But the thing is, no one is required to agree with any of those stands to be a United Methodist.

            As I talk about why that is, I want to make one thing clear.  Nothing I’m saying here is intended to be a criticism of other denominations.  Other denominations have their own ways of doing things, and they have reasons why they do things that way.  I’m not trying to tell any other denomination what it should do.  I’m trying to explain why the United Methodist church does things the way it does.

            The reason we take this approach, the reason we don’t have a big laundry list of things you have to agree to in order to become a United Methodist, is because we think this is the approach Jesus took.  When Jesus went out to talk to people, what did he do?  He said, “Follow me”.  He did not give people a long list of things that had to believe before they could come and follow him.  He did not tell them they had to memorize a bunch of stuff before they could come and follow him.  He simply said, “Follow me.”

            Jesus was not interested in creating a bunch of people to study theology.  The world already had enough people studying theology.  They were called “Scribes” and “Pharisees” and “Teachers of the Law”.  There were enough people who knew how believers in God are supposed to live.  Jesus got into arguments with those people sometimes, but he really did not disagree all that much what the Scribes and the Pharisees and the Teachers of the Law said about scripture.  He just could not see that there were very many people actually living as if they believed it.

            So Jesus kept it simple:  “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  This is the first and greatest commandment.  And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”  Later on, Jesus said, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

            You could say, really, that Jesus’ laundry list had one item on it.  Love.  Love for God.  Love for each other.  The United Methodists add a couple of things, but the things we add are things that are related to love.  That’s all Jesus required.  Why should we require more?

            The Apostle Paul, in our Bible reading for tonight, took a similar approach.  “If you declare with your mouth ‘Jesus is Lord’ and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.”  Paul’s laundry list had one item on it.  Belief.  Belief in Jesus Christ as the risen Savior.  That’s it.  Period.

            When John Wesley started the groups that eventually became United Methodism, he found a situation that was a little bit similar to the situation Jesus found among the Jewish people.  The world had plenty of people who’d studied theology.  They were called priests and bishops and so forth.  There were enough people who knew how believers in God are supposed to live.  Wesley did not disagree all that much with what the priests and bishops said.  He just could not see that there were very many people actually living as if they believed it.

            So Wesley kept it simple, too:  “Do all the good you can. By all the means you can. In all the ways you can. In all the places you can. At all the times you can. To all the people you can. As long as ever you can.”  And also “An ounce of love is worth a pound of knowledge.”

            You could say that Wesley’s laundry list had very few items on it.  Love, have love for God and love for others, accept Jesus Christ as your Savior, and show that love by doing good.

            As long as we agree on our love for God and on our love for others, as long as we agree that we need to show that love by doing good, we can disagree on a lot of the other stuff.  Wesley said, “Think and let think.”  He said, “Though we cannot think alike, may we not love alike? May we not be of one heart, though we are not of one opinion? Without all doubt, we may. Herein all the children of God may unite, notwithstanding these smaller differences.” 

            Now, understand here, I am not saying “Don’t study the Bible”.  We should study the Bible.  We should think about God.  We should know what we believe and we should know why we believe what we believe.  The point, though, is that what we are allowed to disagree about the details.  We’re allowed to have different opinions on the finer points.  We’re even allowed to disagree with the official stands of the church.  It’s okay.  The most important things are that we love God, love others, accept Jesus Christ as our Savior, and show that love by doing good.

            There’s one other thing about this, too.  We allow people to have different views on things because we recognize that no human being is ever perfect.  We recognize that the official stands of the church, while they may be well-intentioned, can sometimes be wrong, because they are decided by human beings.  So, we don’t all have to agree with them.  In fact, as United Methodists, we should have no problem at all if someone does disagree.

            What it comes down to, really, is a recognition that the things we agree on are far more important than the things we don’t.  The important things are, one, love and acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Savior, and, two, going out and showing that love to as many people as we can.  When we let ourselves get hung up on other things, when we start worrying too much about our disagreements on issues and forget the things that unite us, we don’t show love.  And then we fail to be what the church is supposed to be.

            Love and acceptance of Jesus Christ as our Savior, and going out and showing that love to as many people as we can.  Those things are what following Jesus means.  They’re what Jesus asked people to do.  That’s what the Apostle Paul asked people to do.  They’re what Wesley asked people to do.  And it’s what we continue to be asked to do.

            Nobody can agree on everything.  So we should be thankful that, in the United Methodist church, we don’t all have to agree with everything.  We can think and let think, and we don’t have to think alike.  All we need to do is love alike.  That’s why we don’t have a catechism or a laundry list.  Jesus gave us the list.   “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’  ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’  ‘A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.’  We may not always think alike, but we can always love alike.  And when we do, we can be God’s people, living in God’s world.

Accepted By God

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  July 16, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Acts 10:34-48.

            I would guess that most of us here, maybe all of us here, are proud to be Americans.  Not that our country is perfect–we know that it’s not, it never has been, and it never will be.  The main reason for that is that Americans are people.  People are inherently imperfect, and anything people are involved in will be imperfect.

            But while we know our country is not perfect, we think it’s pretty darn good.  And it is.  Over the two hundred forty-seven years that this country has existed, it has been a force for good much more often than it has been for bad.  It has defended freedom around the world.  It has led economic booms and raised the standard of living for many, many people.  

            And one of the reasons for that has been that God has blessed our country.  God has blessed us in many ways.  He has blessed our country with great natural resources.  He has blessed our country with great beauty.  He has blessed our country with courageous, adventurous, independent people who have been willing to take chances and do whatever it takes to make this country a great country.

            Because God has blessed this country in so many ways, it’s tempting to believe that God will always bless this country.  It’s tempting to believe that the United States is somehow special in God’s eyes, that God has specifically chosen us because of how great and how wonderful we are.  It’s tempting, in short, to believe we have somehow earned God’s blessings, and therefore to take God’s blessings for granted and assume they’ll always be there.

            But anytime we start to take God for granted, we get in trouble.  Peter, in our reading for today, tells us we should not assume that we somehow have earned some sort of favor in God’s eyes.  Peter says, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right.”

            Now, it’s important that we understand the context here.  The story takes up a whole chapter in the book of Acts, which is why we did not read it all this morning.  But basically, Peter was at the home of a Roman centurion, a non-Jew, named Cornelius.  Cornelius had a vision from God that he was supposed to send for Peter.  He did, and Peter came.  And there were a lot of people there waiting for him.  Peter said to Cornelius, you know, it’s against our Jewish law for me to associate with someone like you.  Why did you send for me?  Cornelius tells Peter about his vision, thanks Peter for coming, and says, “Now we are all here in the presence of God to listen to everything the Lord has commanded you to tell us.”

            This had a tremendous impact on Peter.  Peter, was the leader of the apostles, but he was very much still very much in the mode that the Savior had come for the Jewish people.  God had been working on him, trying to widen his viewpoint.  Earlier in this chapter, God had given Peter a vision of various animals that Peter was allowed to eat, even though they were against Jewish dietary laws.  God said to him, “Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.”  

It was shortly after that, that he went to the house of Cornelius.  And it shows he had heard what God said, because in explaining why he violated Jewish law to go there, he said, “God has shown me that I should not call anyone impure or unclean.”  That’s when he asked why Cornelius had sent for him.  After Cornelius answered, that’s when Peter said, “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right.”

The Jewish people had taken it for granted that God would always bless them.  Even Peter had taken it for granted that when the Savior came, He would offer salvation to the Jews.  But he found out differently.  Peter now realized that God does not care what country or ethnic group someone is from.  What God cares about is whether someone is faithful to Him and does what God wants Him to do.

And that brings us back to this country.  For a long time, the vast majority of people in the United States tried to be faithful to God and tried to do what God wanted them to do.  Again, not perfectly–this country has made plenty of mistakes.  But the goal, however imperfectly approached, of the vast majority of people in this country was to follow God and to do what was right.

That is no longer the case.  The most recent poll I could find was from a couple of years ago, and it showed that the percentage of Americans who call themselves Christians is down to sixty-three percent.  That’s down significantly from what it was just ten years ago.  And of course, there are a lot of people who call themselves Christians who don’t let their supposed belief affect their daily lives in any significant way.  They are what we might call Christians in Name Only.  Only forty-one percent of people who call themselves Christian attend church even once a month.  And that’s self-reported, so that figure might even be overstated.  And yes, one can be a strong Christian without attending church regularly, but that’s still at least one gauge of how seriously people take their Christian faith.

I do not pretend to speak for God.  But it seems to me that God is not likely to continue blessing a nation that does not continue to follow Him.  God is not likely to continue to bless a nation that is not faithful to Him.  God stopped blessing the nation of Israel when it abandoned Him.  It seems to me that God would apply that same standard to the United States.

But at the same time, I do not want you to despair.  All is not lost.  I say that for two reasons.  One of them is that, in the Old Testament, when things got bad for the nation of Israel, they turned back to God.  And when they did, God blessed them again.  They still had to deal with the consequences of what they’d done, but God did bless them again.  If this country turns back to God, we have every reason to think God will bless us again, too.

But you and I, much as we might like to, probably do not have the power to turn this country back to God.  So that brings me to the other reason for hope.  Remember what Peter said.  “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism, but accepts from every nation the one who fears Him and does what is right.”

That means that, no matter what this country does, you and I can still be accepted by God.  All we need to do is stay faithful to God.  All we need to do is follow God.  All we need to do is do what Jesus told us to do.  Serve God.  Show love to God.  Show love to others.  Keep a strong faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  If we do that, God will accept us, no matter what anyone else chooses to do.

That’s where we need to keep our focus.  That may mean that we need to turn away from society, to a certain extent.  Now, I’m not suggesting that we become monks and wall ourselves off from society.  But if this country continues to turn away from God, it will become harder and harder to stay faithful to God.  Where faith in Jesus Christ used to be considered a positive thing, it will start to become a negative thing.  In some places in this country, it already is.  People will be looked down upon for being Christians.  Some business owners have already been sued because they refused to do things that violated their Christian faith.  If present trends continue, that’s only going to get worse.  For most of us, it has been relatively easy to be open about our Christian faith.  But if things keep going the way they are, it’s going to get harder.

But you know what?  It was not easy for Peter and the other early Christians to be open about their Christian faith, either.  They were persecuted.  Some of them were jailed.  Some of them were killed–you may remember the story of the stoning of Stephen, for example.  For most of the last two thousand years, being a Christian has not been easy.

But while it’s not easy, it’s worth it.  The payoff is tremendous.  The payoff is salvation and eternal life in heaven, by our faith in Jesus Christ and by God’s love and grace and mercy.  And when you think about how long eternity is, well, it’s worth having to put up with some stuff while we’re on earth.

I don’t know what the future holds for this country.  Maybe we will return to God.  Maybe God will continue to bless us.  But I know that, regardless of what the future holds for the country, God will accept the one who is faithful to Him and does what is right.  So let’s do that.  Let’s be faithful to God.  Let’s serve God.  Let’s love God.  Let’s love others.  Let’s keep our faith in Jesus Christ strong.  If we do, God will accept us.  And we will have eternal life with Him in heaven.

 

The Faith of Ananias

The Sunday evening message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on July 9, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Acts 9:1-19.

            The story of Saul’s conversion is one of the most remarkable stories in the Bible.  And that’s saying something, because the Bible has a lot of remarkable stories in it.  But think about it.  Here’s Saul.  He’s a Pharisee.  One of the group that saw to it that Jesus was killed.  One of the group that, once Jesus was killed, tried to get rid of all of Jesus’ followers, too.

            And Saul was not just an ordinary Pharisee.  Saul was one of the most zealous Pharisees there was.  He was there to help at the stoning of Stephen.  He went house to house in Jerusalem, dragging off both men and women and putting them in prison for being Christians.  And then, suddenly, he meets Jesus.  And he eventually becomes possibly the most important Christian there has ever been.

            But tonight, I don’t want to focus on Saul.  I want to focus on another person in this story.  I want to focus on Ananias.

            This is the only time this Ananias is mentioned in the Bible.  There are a couple of other Ananiases, both of whom we find in the books of Acts.  Maybe Ananias was a common name in that area at this time, I don’t know.  One of them is in Acts chapter Five, when someone named Ananias is struck down for lying to the Holy Spirit.  The other is in Acts Twenty-three and Twenty-four, a high priest before whom Saul, by then called Paul, is brought to stand trial.

            But this is the only time we meet this Ananias.  And so, as you’d expect, we don’t know a whole lot about him.  We know he lived in Damascus, which was where Saul was headed when he met Jesus.

            And so that leads us to a question right off the bat.  Did Jesus choose this moment to show Himself to Saul, this moment when Saul was headed to Damascus, because Ananias lived there?  After all, I assume Jesus could’ve appeared to Saul at any time.  He could’ve appeared to Saul while Saul was still in Jerusalem.  He could’ve appeared to Saul after Saul left Damascus and went on to some other city.  Was one of the reasons Jesus chose this time the fact that Ananias lived there, and Jesus specifically wanted Ananias to be the one to go to Saul when Saul lost his sight?

            Well, we don’t know the answer to that.  But whether because of Ananias, or because of some other reason, or just by coincidence, it was when Saul was on the road to Damascus that Jesus appeared to him.  And Ananias was the one chosen by the Lord to go to Saul and restore his sight.

            Why Ananias, I wonder?  We’re told he was a disciple of Jesus, which we would certainly expect.  But he cannot have been the only disciple of Jesus in Damascus.  After all, Saul was going there specifically to persecute the Christians there.  It would hardly have been worth Saul’s time to go there to persecute one guy.  There have to have been lots of disciples of Jesus living in Damascus, or Saul would not have been going there.  So, why not one of the others?  Why Ananias?

            Only God knows the answer to that, obviously.  But let’s take a look at Ananias and see if we can find some of the reasons the Lord might have chosen him.

            For one thing, Ananias has courage.  After all, Ananias knows all about Saul.  He knows exactly who Saul is and why he has come to Damascus.  He knows what Saul has done to the Christians in other places.  In fact, he tells all that to the Lord.  He says, “Lord, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to Your holy people in Jerusalem.  And he has come here with authority from the chief priests to arrest all who call on Your name.”

            So Ananias has reasons to fear Saul.  And that’s not all.  We’re told Saul’s companions have taken Saul to a house in Damascus.  Now, we don’t know anything about that house, other than that it’s referred to as “the house of Judas.”  That’s not a reference to the Judas who betrayed Jesus–there were lots of people named Judas back then, too.  We don’t know if Ananias knew of this house or the people in it.  But it stands to reason that Saul’s companions were just as eager to persecute the Christians as Saul was, and that if they took him to someone’s house, the people in that house were probably on Saul’s side, too, and were also eager to persecute Christians.  

If those people knew who Ananias was, that he was a follower of Jesus, they might kill him before he even got in the door.  And yet, when the Lord told him to go there, he went.  That took a lot of courage.

            It took a lot of faith, too.  Ananias needed to trust the Lord.  He had to trust the Lord in at least two ways.  One, he had to trust that the Lord would, in fact, protect him when he went to this house.  But he also had to trust that the Lord would give him the power and ability to do what the Lord told him to do.

            The Lord told Ananias to place his hands on Saul and restore his sight.  Had Ananias ever done anything like that before?  We don’t know, but there’s nothing in the Bible to indicate that he had.  There are not a lot of people in the Bible who were told had the power to heal someone just by laying hands on them.  A few of the twelve disciples, like Peter, had that power after the Holy Spirit came on them.  But Ananias was not one of the twelve disciples.

            What if that was you?  What if the Lord told you that you could place your hands on someone and restore their sight?  Would you go do it?  Would you even believe that you could?  I mean, yes, you’d received this vision and all, but still.  Would you be confident that you could actually do this?  And even if you were, would the people at the house believe you?  Would Saul believe you?  Would Saul even let you place your hands on him?  It took a lot of faith, as well as a lot of courage, for Ananias to walk over to that house and do what the Lord told him to do.

            So what’s the point?  The point is that, as far as we know, there was nothing special about Ananias.  Yes, he was a follower of Jesus, but there were lots of followers of Jesus in Damascus.  There was no obvious reason, from a human perspective, for Ananias to stand out among them.  And yet, the Lord specifically chose Ananias to do this thing that took great faith and great courage.  This thing that played an important part in turning Saul into Paul, one of the most important Christians in history.

            Most of us would probably say there’s nothing special about us.  Yes, we’re followers of Jesus, but there are lots of followers of Jesus.  There’s no obvious reason for any of us to stand out among those followers.  Yet, there are things the Lord has chosen you to do, too.  Things that take faith and courage, just as the things Ananias did took faith and courage.

            I don’t know what those things are for you.  It will be something different for each of us.  Some of us, like Saul, are chosen to do great things that change the course of history.  Others of us, like Ananias, are chosen to play a small but important part in great things.  Still others of us, like the many, many followers of Jesus who are not named in the Bible, are chosen to do things that no one will ever know about, but that play a part in bringing one or more people to Christ.

            And what an awesome thing that is, don’t you think?  To be called to do something that plays a part in bringing someone to Christ?  After all, it’s faith in Jesus Christ that gives us salvation and eternal life.  Wouldn’t it be great to know that you played even a small part in helping someone receive eternal life?  I don’t think it could get any better than that.  There’s nothing better we could ever do for anyone than to help them receive eternal life.  That’s as good as it could possibly get.

            And there’s one more thing about that.  I said some of us are chosen to do things that no one will ever know about.  That’s not really true.  Because God will know about them.  God will know about them, and God will care about them.  Nothing we ever do for God goes unnoticed.  And certainly, nothing we ever do to help bring someone to Christ goes unnoticed.  God notices, and God cares.

            So let Ananias serve as an inspiration to you.  Whatever you may be chosen to do, do it with the courage and faith of Ananias.  Don’t worry about what someone’s reaction may be–trust God to protect you.  Don’t worry about whether you actually can do what God has chosen you to do–trust that God will give you the power and ability to do what God has chosen you to do.

            You may think there’s nothing special about you.  Ananias probably thought there was nothing special about him, too.  But Ananias was special to God, and so are you.  And you can do whatever God has chosen you to do, just as Ananias did.

           

 

An Invitation to Heaven

The Sunday morning worship service in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish on July 9, 2023.  The Bible verses used are Matthew 22:1-14.

            Jesus starts his story by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”  And that gets our attention, because we’d all like to know what heaven is like.  We’d like to be able to picture it.  We’d like to know what it looks like.  We’d like to know what we’ll look like there.  We’d like to know what we’ll be doing while we’re there.  So when Jesus says, “the kingdom of heaven is like…”, we perk up.  We listen.

            But, in our reading for today, even though Jesus starts by saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like…”, Jesus does not tell us what the kingdom of heaven is like.  Instead, Jesus tells us something more important.  Jesus tells us who is going to go to heaven.

            That the thing we really need to know.  I mean, we’d like to believe everyone goes to heaven.  I’d like to believe that, too.  If you really take the concept of hell seriously, you would not want your worst enemy to go there.  Hell is awful beyond our ability to imagine.  

I wish no one ever went to hell.  But that’s not what the Bible tells us.  The Bible tells us, first, that we all deserve to go to hell, because we’re all sinners who deserve to be condemned.  But God, out of His great love for us, has given us a way to escape hell.  And it’s not even a very hard way.  All we have to do is believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  If we do that, we receive salvation and eternal life.  It’s as easy as that.

            God deliberately made it easy.  Because God really does not want anyone to go to hell, either.  In fact, I suspect God dislikes it when people go to hell even more than we do, because God understands hell better than we do.  God wants everyone to be in heaven with Him.  That’s why God made it so simple, and so easy, for us to go there.  

            God could’ve made it a lot harder, you know.  God could’ve made us do some great, difficult thing to get to heaven.  God could’ve made us live perfect, or at least close to perfect, lives to get to heaven.  God could’ve given us a long list of things we had to do or not do in order to get to heaven.  But God did not want it to be hard for us to get to heaven.  Again, God wanted it to be easy, because God loves us so much.  God does not make us earn our way into heaven.  God invites us into heaven.  God is eager for us to go to heaven.  All we have to do is believe in His divine Son, Jesus Christ, as the Savior.  That’s it.  Period.

            But as easy as God made it, there are people who refuse to do it.  There are people who refuse to go to heaven.  There are people who choose hell over heaven.  That’s a really sad thing.  It makes me sad.  It probably makes you sad, too.  And if it makes us sad, think about how sad it makes God.  Because, again, God understands hell better than we do.  God knows how awful it is there.  But, because God wants us to have free will, God allows us to choose hell, if that’s what we want to do.  God is incredibly sad when we make that choice, but God allows us to make it.

            In our Bible reading for today, Jesus tells us how eager God is for us to go to heaven.  Jesus says God invites everyone to come to Him.  God starts out by inviting His special, chosen people.  The people of Israel.  God invites them–and they refuse to come.

            Now, God could’ve gotten really upset about that.  But God does not.  Instead, God gives them another chance.  God sends out more invitations, this time sending them through Jesus Christ.  And in these invitations, God tries to tell His people how great it’s going to be in heaven.  He says, everything’s prepared.  I’ve got all kinds of things ready for you.  And they’re really great things.  They’re the best things you could ever imagine.  Please, just come.  You’ll love it.  Really, you will.  Please, just come.

            Such an awesome invitation God gave them.  And yet, they still refused.  They could not be bothered.  They just went about their business.  Doing whatever they did.  Completely ignoring God.  It’s like the invitation had never been made.  They paid no attention to it whatsoever.

            But that’s not all.  Some of them did even worse than ignoring the invitation.  They killed the one who delivered the invitation.  Jesus came to earth, inviting God’s people to come to the kingdom of heaven.  Again, all they had to do was believe in Him.  And not only did they refuse to believe, they killed Him.

            We’re told, in verse seven, that God was “enraged.  He sent his armies and destroyed thos murderers and burned their city.”  

            But God still wanted people to come to the kingdom of heaven.  So, He invited others.  He invited everyone.  He said to His messengers, the apostles, go out and invite everyone.  Don’t worry about whether they’re worthy or not.  Find them all.  Gather them all in.  God is just as eager for those people–in other words, you and me–to come as he was for His chosen people to come.

            In other words, the message of Jesus Christ applies to us just as much as anyone.  All we need to do is accept God’s invitation–believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior–and we can go to be with God in heaven.  It does not matter whether we belong there.  It does not matter if we deserve to be there.  We don’t have to pass any tests to get there.  All we need to do is believe in Jesus.  Period.

            And it would be wonderful if the story ended there.  Because we like all this.  I mean, maybe we don’t like the part about God’s rage too much.  But the rest of it, we like.  We especially like the part where all the people, the bad and the good, are gathered into the kingdom of heaven.  I mean, we might like to think we’re pretty good, sometimes, but deep down, we know we’re a long way from perfect.  It’s kind of a relief to read that both the bad and the good are gathered into the kingdom of heaven.

            But the story does not end there.  In Jesus’ story, after the guests have all been gathered, there’s a problem with one of them.  We’re told that this is like a wedding banquet, and this guest is not wearing wedding clothes.  And he’s thrown out.

            You see, it is wonderful to know that God invites everyone to be part of the kingdom of heaven.  It is wonderful to know that we don’t have to be “good enough” to get to heaven, that all we need to do is believe in Jesus.  But the thing is, we cannot just say we believe in Jesus.  We have to really believe in Jesus.  

            And if we really believe in Jesus, we cannot just go on the way we were before we met Jesus.  Our belief in Jesus has to change us somehow.  Not because we’re trying to earn our way into heaven, but because we want to honor God.  We want to glorify God.  In other words, if we truly believe Jesus Christ is the divine Son of God, then we will want to do the things Jesus told us to do.  We will want to live the way Jesus told us to live.  Not perfectly–as we’ve said before, we’re not capable of perfection.  But we’ll try.  We’ll do the best we can.

            If our belief in Jesus Christ does not change us somehow, then it’s not a real belief.  We cannot read the gospels and find anyone who came to belief in Jesus whose life was not changed by that belief.  And we cannot find anyone to today who comes to belief in Jesus whose life is not changed by that belief.  We may tell ourselves we believe in Jesus.  We may even be able to fool ourselves into believing that.  But if our lives are not changed as a result of that belief, it’s not real.  And while we may be able to fool ourselves, we will not fool God.  God will see that our claimed belief in Jesus is not real.  And a phony belief in Jesus will not get us into the kingdom of heaven.  Only a real belief will.

            We may not know exactly what the kingdom of heaven is like, but we know we all want to go there.  We know God wants us to go there, too.  God wants everyone to go to heaven.  God is eager for everyone to go to heaven.  That’s why God sent Jesus to earth–to give us all an invitation to heaven.  

            God will allow us to refuse His invitation.  God is sad when we refuse it, but God allows us to.  It seems like such an awful thing, to have a chance to go to heaven and refuse it.  But it happens.  And the chances are, you know someone it may happen to.

            So let’s not make God sad.  Let’s accept God’s invitation to the kingdom of heaven.  Let’s believe in Jesus Christ as the Savior, and let’s let that belief change our lives.  And let’s do what we can to encourage others to accept that invitation, too.  Let’s do what we can to bring everyone we know with us to salvation and eternal life in heaven.

 

Freedom

The Sunday night message given in the Gettysburg United Methodist church on July 2, 2023.  The Bible verses used are John 8:31-38.

            Freedom.  It may be the thing Americans value most.  The Statue of Liberty says, “Bring me your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free.”  The song “America”, which we sang a little while ago, says, “Let freedom ring.”  The old song by The Rascals says, “People everywhere just want to be free.”

            Freedom is part of our DNA as Americans.  The first amendment lists a whole bunch of freedoms we have as Americans:  freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government.  As we celebrate Independence Day tomorrow, one of the things we celebrate is our freedom.

            From the time we’re young, we want freedom.  Little kids will try to get away from their parents and explore.  In middle school, we dream of when we’ll have a car so we can have freedom.  When we’re in high school, we can’t wait for the time we can get out on our own.

            Even animals desire freedom.  House cats try to get out of the house.  Dogs try to get out of the yard.  The desire for freedom seems like it’s part of life on earth.

            But the thing is, when we talk about freedom, what, exactly, do we mean?  We talk about freedom so much, and yet we rarely define the word.  What really is freedom?

            Some would say it’s the ability to do whatever we want to do.  And that is freedom, of a kind.  But when I think about it, I don’t really think that’s a very good or a very healthy kind of freedom.  For one thing, a lot of times, the things we want to do are not good for us.  We may have the freedom to do them, but they’ll have consequences that can get us into trouble.  For another thing, if we truly can do whatever we want to do, it probably means that there’s no one else in our lives that we care about or who cares about us.  That’s why we can do anything we want to:  because nobody really cares what we do.  And that can be a very sad way to live.

            In our Bible reading for today, in just those few verses, Jesus talked about freedom.  He said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples.  Then you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.”  A little later, he said, “If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”

            Of course, Jesus clearly did not mean free to do whatever we want.  Jesus never preached a gospel of “anything goes”.  Jesus said the truth sets us free, and the Son sets us free.  When you think about it, that’s really two ways of saying the same thing, because Jesus is the truth.  As he said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.”

            In a way, any truth contributes to setting us free.  George Orwell once wrote that “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four.  If that is granted, all else follows.”  Now, maybe you say, well, of course two plus two makes four.  But Orwell’s point was that if something is true, it is true in all circumstances and in all situations.  It does not matter whether we like it or not.  It does not matter whether somebody else likes it or not.  In Orwell’s story, 1984, it did not matter whether the government approved of it or not.  No matter how much someone might want it to be five, and might try to force you to believe it’s five, two plus two remains four.  And as long as we have the freedom to acknowledge that, then we have the freedom to acknowledge all other truths, too.  It is the truth that sets us free.

            But of course, Jesus was not just talking about the freedom to say two plus two makes four.  Jesus was talking about the truth that he is the divine Son of God.  That he is the Savior of the world.  And that true freedom can be found only in following Jesus.

            The freedom Jesus was talking about has two aspects to it.  One is that we are freed from something.  And the other is that we are freed for something.

            What are we freed from?  Sin.  The truth that Jesus is the Savior frees us from sin.  That has a couple of aspects to it, too.  One is that we are freed from the consequences of our sin.  And the other is that we are freed from our desire to sin.

            As the Apostle Paul wrote, we are all sinners.  We are all in need of forgiveness.  And that forgiveness comes from our faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior.  If we believe in that truth, then the death of Jesus Christ was Jesus taking the punishment that we should get for our sins.  Because of that, we no longer have to take that punishment ourselves.  We still deserve it, but we won’t receive it.  We are freed from it because of our acceptance of the truth that Jesus is the Savior.

            But can we really say that we are freed from our desire to sin?  Not totally, perhaps.  Satan will still tempt us.  We will still tempt ourselves sometimes, too.  But if we follow Jesus Christ, we will do the things Jesus wants us to do.  We will live the way Jesus wants us to live.  Our acceptance of the truth that Jesus is the Savior, that Jesus is worthy of our worship, that faith in Jesus is the way to salvation and eternal life, will keep our desire to sin away from us.  We cannot both follow sin and follow Jesus.  If we truly follow Jesus, we will leave sin behind us.

            And that leads to the other part of the equation:  what we are freed for.  We are freed to follow Jesus.  We are freed to be faithful to Jesus.  That means, again, doing the things Jesus told us to do and living the way Jesus told us to live.  We are freed to serve Jesus.  We are freed to do things that bring honor and glory to His holy name.  We are freed to love Jesus and to love our neighbors, the way Jesus told us to.

            Now, some might say, but that’s not real freedom.  I’m not free to do what I want.  If I do this, I have to do what Jesus told me to do.  And sometimes I don’t want to.  Some of the things Jesu told us to do are hard.  Some of the things Jesus told us to do are no fun.  If I have to do those things, I’m not free.  I’m still a slave.  It’s just that I’m a slave to Jesus.

            Well, I suppose that’s one way to look at it.  But when we live the way Jesus told us to live, we have a higher freedom.  It’s not a freedom to do whatever we want.  It’s a freedom to be who we were meant to be.  It’s freedom to be who God wants us to be, who we were called to be.

            And that’s one of the greatest freedoms there could ever be.  Have you ever tried to be someone you’re not?  It can happen in a lot of ways, but usually it has to do with trying to be who someone else thinks we should be.  Maybe we try to be someone we’re not because we want to be popular.  We want to be liked and accepted, and we’re afraid that people won’t like us unless we try to be something other than what we are.  Maybe we try to be someone we’re not because we want to succeed in our work, and we think that to do that we have to do certain things even though we don’t want to do them.  Maybe we try to be someone we’re not because we see things on TV or in movies or on social media that teach us that only certain thoughts or ideas are “acceptable” in our current society, and we think we have to believe those things to live in society as it is.  There can be all kinds of reasons we can try to be someone we’re not.

            But if you’ve ever done that, you know what a trap it is.  We can never be happy when we’re trying to be something other than who God calls us to be.  We may try to convince ourselves we’re happy.  We may even manage to believe it, for a while.  But deep down, we know it’s not true.  In the long run, we can never be happy trying to be someone we’re not.  We can only find true happiness by being who we were meant to be.  Who God wants us to be.  Who we are called to be.

            When we live the way Jesus told us to live, we are as free as it’s possible to be.  Not because we’re free to do what we want.  But because we’re free to be who we’re meant to be.  If you’ve ever experienced that freedom, you know it’s about the greatest feeling there is.  To not have to pretend anymore.  To not have to live a lie anymore.  To truly be who we were meant to be.  It’s an incredible freedom.

            That’s how the truth sets us free.  That’s how Jesus sets us free.  Through our faith, we are free to live in the Lord’s love and to live lives of faith in Jesus Christ.  It’s the greatest freedom of all.

            We truly are yearning to breathe free.  So let’s put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ.  Let’s live the way Jesus wants us to live.  Let’s let the divine Son set us free to be the people God intended us to be.  And let’s let that freedom ring!

 

True Freedom

The Sunday morning message in the United Methodist churches of the Wheatland Parish.  The Bible verses used are Galatians 5:13-26.

            The Fourth of July will be in two days.  I hope you enjoy your holiday.  If you or your family is planning to shoot off any fireworks, please be careful.  Even though we got some rain recently, there’s still always a chance of a fire.  Fireworks can be beautiful, but we’d sure hate to have this most American of holidays end with a tragedy.

            The Fourth of July is the day we celebrate our freedom as Americans.  We have a lot of freedoms in our society.  We tend to take those freedoms for granted, and we should not.  As we’re seeing in recent times, it’s not guaranteed that we’ll always have those freedoms.  They can be taken away.  Plus, there are many people in the world who do not live in the freedom that we do.  We need to remember to thank God for the freedoms we have living here in the United States.

            As Americans, you and I can, for the most part, live in any way we choose to live.  There are certain restrictions, of course, and some of them are necessary.  But even today, we still can pretty much live the way we want to.  We can live where we want to live, and we can do what we want to do.  If someone else thinks the way we’re living is stupid, well, they can think that, but we don’t need to pay any attention to them.  As Americans, we can still basically live the way we choose to live and do what we want to do.

            As Christians, we also celebrate our freedom.  But the freedom we celebrate as Christians is not the freedom to do what we want to do.  It’s the freedom to do what God wants us to do.  It’s not the freedom to live the way we want to live.  It’s the freedom to live the way God wants us to live.

            The Apostle Paul says that Christ has set us free.  Free from sin.  Including our own sinful desires.  But, Paul says, we cannot just take that freedom for granted.  We have to stand firm, so we don’t fall back into the slavery of sin.

            It’s a constant battle.  Freedom in Christ versus the slavery of sin.  You and I have to fight that battle every day.  Jesus will help us.  In fact, Jesus will be there and will fight the battle right alongside us.  But you and I still have to do our part.

            Paul puts the battle in pretty stark terms.  He says, “Walk by the spirit, and do not gratify the desires of the flesh.  For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.”

            In other words, we must choose one or the other.  We either walk by the spirit, or we gratify the desires of the flesh.  We cannot do both.  We cannot compromise.  We cannot walk by the Spirit some of the time, and gratify the desires of the flesh some of the time.  In other words, we cannot be slaves to sin some of the time, and be free some of the time.  

            Because that’s what sin tries to convince us of.  Sin tries to convince us that we can give in to the desires of the flesh once in a while, and then go back and walk by the spirit as if nothing had happened.  But it does not work that way.  The more we give in to sin, the easier it gets to sin.  After a while, we don’t even think about it anymore.

            Let me give you an example.  I have, a couple of times in my life, been on a low-carb diet.  Basically, on a low-carb diet, what you do is give up eating potatoes, breads, some fruits, and pretty much all desserts.  What you can eat is meat, most vegetables, some fruits, and a limited amount of dairy products.  Now, it’s more complicated than that, and if you’re thinking about going on a low-carb diet I urge you to do more research on it rather than just going by what I said here.

            But the point is that it works.  Both times I’ve tried it, I’ve lost weight.  And at first, I do pretty well on it.  Because, as I said, you get to eat all the meat, and I really like meat.  So that satisfies me.  For a while.

            But after a while, I start remembering how much I like ice cream.  And chocolate chip cookies.  And chocolate brownies.  And so, I cheat on my diet.  Just once.  I won’t do it again.  In fact, I feel kind of guilty about having done it once.  

But then, after a few days, maybe a week, I start thinking about how good the blizzards at Dairy Queen are.  And so, I do “do it again”.  I cheat again.  And again, I feel kind of guilty about it.  But not quite as guilty as I felt the first time.  And so, a few days later, I cheat again.  And this time, I don’t feel much of anything about it.  And pretty soon, I’m off that low-carb diet completely, and I’m not even really thinking about it anymore.

Now, I’m not saying that eating ice cream and cookies is sinful (although there certainly are Bible passages that talk about gluttony).  But the point is that what Paul calls “the desires of the flesh”--sin--works exactly that same way.  The first time we do it, we probably feel guilty about it.  The second time, not quite so much.  The third time, we don’t feel much of anything.  And pretty soon we’re constantly giving in those desires of the flesh, and we’re not even really thinking much about it anymore.  

That’s why Paul says “the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh.  They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.”  It’s why Paul tells us to walk by the Spirit, so that we will not gratify the desires of the flesh.  We have to choose, one way or the other.  That’s not to say we’ll be perfect.  We’ve said before that perfection is not possible for human beings.  But that’s why I said we have fight the battle every day.  We cannot just make the choice once and be done with it.  Those sinful desires of the flesh will keep coming back at us, trying to enslave us.  We need to keep fighting them, day after day after day.

But we’ve been talking in abstract terms.  What are those desires of the flesh?  Paul lists some of them, although he says it’s not a complete list.  Sexual immorality.  Impurity.  Debauchery.  Idolatry.  Witchcraft.  Hatred.  Discord.  Jealousy.  Fits of rage.  Selfish ambition.  Dissention.  Factions.  Envy.  Drunkenness.  Orgies.  All of those won’t apply to all of us, of course.  But I’m pretty sure each one of us has at least one of them that applies to us.  We may not always give in to it, but we have to keep fighting it.  I don’t think I’ve ever known anyone--including myself--who was not subject to some of those things sometimes.

We need to fight those things, and we need to ask Jesus for help.  But here’s the thing.  There’s an old saying that you cannot defeat something with nothing.  If our entire focus is on the things we should not do, we will probably fail.  We cannot spend our lives just avoiding negative things.  We need to fill our lives with positive things, the fruit of the Spirit.

What’s the fruit of the Spirit?  Paul lists that, too.  Love.  Joy.  Peace.  Forbearance.  Kindness.  Goodness.  Faithfulness.  Gentleness.  Self-control.  Those are the things we need to focus on.  Those are the things we need to spend our lives trying to do.  If we do those positive things, we won’t have time to focus on the negative things.  We will defeat the desires of the flesh, simply because we don’t have time for them.

It’s not as easy as that sounds, of course.  As the old saying goes, if it was easy, everybody would do it.  We cannot do it by ourselves.  We can only do this with the help of Jesus.  Jesus helps us ignore the desires of the flesh and focus on the fruits of the Spirit.  In fact, it’s more than that.  As Paul says, Jesus sets us free from the desires of the flesh.  We are no longer enslaved by them.  

Living in the United States, we have the freedom to choose how we want to live.  We can choose to live in slavery to the desires of the flesh.  In fact, society often encourages us to.  How many times have you heard things like, “Follow the desires of your heart” or “Do whatever makes you happy?  That sounds good.  But our hearts are unreliable guides.  There are a lot of sinful things that will make us happy--in the short term.  But they have consequences, and those consequences will come back to bite us in the end.  And we will end up in slavery to the desires of the flesh, and we’ll find that we’re neither happy nor free.

But we can also choose to live by the Holy Spirit.  We can follow the desires of God’s heart.  We can do things that make God happy.  And God’s heart is a reliable guide.  And the fruit of the Spirit will make us happy in the long term.  And we will find that we are both happy and free.

I hope you’ve enjoy the Fourth of July.  I hope you are able to celebrate the freedom we have as Americans.  But let’s use our freedom to live by God’s Holy Spirit.  Then we will have the ultimate freedom--freedom from slavery to sin.  When we have that freedom, we are truly free.