If we were to ask the title question above to Oswald Chambers, he would with emphasis yell a resounding, ‘No!’. In the world’s system, uncertainty is believed to be a bad thing, but in the spiritual life we are certain of our uncertainty.

Chambers writes, “Certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life.” Another way to express that is to say that believers are uncertain of their next step, but they are certain of God. That is because all He does is for our best and for the betterment of mankind as He strives to save us from ourselves.

Chambers adds, “When we become advocates of a creed, something dies; we do not believe God, we only believe our belief about Him.” I find this more and more the truth for many I witness to. They resent, even hate, God because they ‘believe’ He killed their loved one. This is mostly because they don’t know the person and character of God. They only know laws, creeds, and beliefs passed down to them.

Believers are not uncertain of God, but we are uncertain of what He is going to do next. When we are rightly related to God, life is full of spontaneous, joyful uncertainty and expectancy.

Do some people around us die at unexpected times, in unexpected ways? Yes. But to blame God is not to understand that all things are not good but all things do work together for the good because His plan and grace are to be sufficient for us. When we have already ‘died’ in Christ, we should no longer fear our own death and understand that He has the best plan for those around us too.

Are you certain about God and His wishes for you? If so, embrace uncertainty knowing that God has His plan in effect for our good and the good of all. He overcomes evil with good. Let’s trust that ‘Father knows best’.

Be blessed in Jesus the Christ!  Galatians 6:9

C.S. Lewis wrote the title quote. Using a ‘Screwtape Letters’ excerpt, he writes how we humans find staying true to Jesus’ teachings and being obedient to His Word difficult. As we get older, he offers, we find it more and more difficult to persevere.

Adding to that difficulty is the potential to prosper as we age. We get more comfortable ‘in the world’, thus: Prosperity knits a man to the World. He/she finds his/her place  in it, while really the World is finding its place in him/her.

This process leaves the person with a sense of really being ‘at home’ in earth. Do we really want, as Christians, to feel at home in this world? Like I tell those attending our services on the Reservation, this world for Christians is the only Hell we will ever know. Should we desire to feel comfortable here, or should be be trying to convince as many others as we can to join us on our journey out of hell and into heaven?

How ‘comfortable’ are you in your particular circumstances? Remember the admonition in Luke from Christ about the difficulty a ‘rich’ man has entering into the Kingdom of Heaven. We should often take stock of what is truly important in our lives. Are idols creeping into our environments and distracting us from our calling to share the Good News of Jesus the Christ?

I hope this helps put things in better perspective for you this beautiful day the Lord has made. My prayer is that you will be glad and rejoice in it, for He is risen! Acts 2:17-18, Jesus’ quote of Joel’s prophesy, is beginning to be fulfilled in our day. We should be rejoicing and looking forward to being included in this outpouring! God bless you in every way.

I read on this beautiful Easter morning a session with Oswald Chambers. What he writes below I can in no way embellish. Therefore, I will quote some of the passages which, hopefully, will give you a new appreciation of Christ’s accomplishment on the Cross.

“Never tolerate the idea of martyrdom about the Cross of Jesus Christ. The Cross was a superb triumph…He made Redemption the basis of human life, that is, He made a way for every son of man to get into communion with God.

“The Cross did NOT happen to Jesus: He came on purpose for it. He is ‘the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.’ The Incarnation was for the purpose of Redemption. The Cross is the center of Time and of Eternity, the answer to the enigmas of both.

“The center of salvation is the Cross of Jesus, and the reason it is so easy to obtain salvation is because it cost God so much. The Cross is the point where God and sinful man merge with a crash and the way to life is opened—but the crash is on the heart of God.”

No, I could not describe this accomplishment of our Savior any better! Chambers captures the essence of what God wants us to share with others—how very much He loved us and provided an escape for us while, on our behalf, He allowed none for Jesus.

God bless you during these last days. I pray you know Him as your Savior and have made Him, not you, the Lord of your life. (John 1:12-13)

“…[Pride] can smuggle itself into the very center of our religious life,” writes C.S. Lewis. All of us to some extent have Pride issues, and I believe Lewis shines the light on its sly, devious strategy for invading our lives, especially from the spiritual end.

He offers that all other vices stem from our animalistic nature while Pride come directly from Hell itself, adding that Pride is purely spiritual: consequently it becomes more subtle and deadly.

As a teacher, I have often used self-respect to motivate a student to be more disciplined. In essence, I have applied to his Pride to be better than others, i.e. better than those who misbehave. Can we see how easily we all can be caught in the Pride net and contaminate others with whom we come into contact?

Finally, Lewis suggests, “For Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.

I would add that we must be ever vigilant in sensing when Pride issues are present and do our best to eliminate them, expose them, and prevent them from recurring.

John writes in 3:30, that he must decrease so God can increase. I think that his approach may help us in our fight against the cancer of Pride. As long as we are not trying to be superior to others, our fight with Pride will be flowing in a successful direction.

God bless you and yours this beautiful day the Lord has made! Proverbs 4:20-23.

Pride has been the cause of misery for families and nations since the beginning of time. It, according to C.S. Lewis, always means enmity—it is enmity! It is not only enmity between man and man, but also toward God.

When people possess pride, they cannot know and experience God. Lewis writes, “A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

Have you ever measured yourself to God? In Him you come up against something which is in every respect superior to yourself. Lewis adds, “unless you know God as that—and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison—you do not know God at all.

All of us need help with this issue. How often the Bible speaks against pride and shows the different disasters it has caused throughout His Story (history)! Let us keep in mind Jeremiah 17:5 each day! God bless you and yours.

C.S. Lewis writes that each individual’s pride is in competition with other people’s pride. He suggests that no two people in the same profession can agree in conversation concerning their vocation. Pride, he says, is essentially competitive, in and by its very nature, while other vices are competitive only as if by accident.

It is in the throws of competition that makes a person proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.  As Lewis adds, “Once the element of competition has gone, pride has gone.”

Periodically, I will see portions of the reality show The Amazing Race. Every so often one of the sets of competitors will aid another set. Do you find that strange? I submit that such acts are like acts of grace—people getting something they do not deserve. Is it Godly to do such things in competitive environments? You decide.

God bless you in all your endeavors. John 1:12-13.

For years I have stressed to youth and congregations that as Christians we are aliens, we are in this world but are not of it. John 1:12:13 tells us those of us who have believed have become children of God. We are no longer of the human race, but of the race of the Second Adam. We are spiritually complete, carrying a living spirit now which is in tune with God the Father and taught by Jesus through His Holy Spirit.

“Christianity,” according to C.S. Lewis, “thinks this Dark Power [satan] was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong.” Therefore, we are now living in a civil war, a war of rebellion in this world. We are, in fact, in enemy-occupied territory everywhere we go. Our rightful King landed in disguise over 2,000 years ago and is calling us to partake in His campaign to reclaim this world for Him.

In fact, we are here on earth as aliens to sabotage satan’s plans and to fulfill the ministries of our King. 

Are you truly an alien, a believer in Him who set you free from Calvary? Do you act like an alien? Are you different from those who are ‘in-the-world’? Could you be found guilty in a court of law of being an alien [a Christian] because of your deeds without even opening your mouth by testifying?

Let us examine, each of us, why we are here, what we should be doing, what we should be saying, and Who we should be obeying.

God bless you all. Galatians 2:20.

As I read Leviticus 20:24 the other morning, I could not escape the parallels between the ‘founding’ of Israel when they entered the ‘Promised Land’ originally and the founding of our own nation. Many in our own nation have no clue as to how our founding fathers built this country. It was built on Christianity as the base layer with moral values atop. Israel was founded on God; the U.S. was founded on Christ and His principles.

Just as Israel of old was blessed by God as they remained obedient and focused on Him, so also has the U.S. been blessed by God for its focus on Christ and Godly principles. We could never have become the most powerful and richest nation in the world without His blessings. After all, we are less than a tenth the age of the youngest nations in Europe!

What has happened recently? Have we left our first love, Christ, just as Israel left their first love and chased after other gods and produced their own idols? Yes! First, we declared a lie that there was meant to be a separation of Church and State. That tore out the base foundation of our nation. Then we threw out as many reminders of Christ as we could: the Ten Commandments, prayer in schools, etc.

Since those terrible decisions, we as a nation have been blending into the world—like the other ungodly nations. Just as Israel came under judgment when she blended, so we also are coming under judgment. We are just now beginning to face His wrath like the Israel of old. The recent increase in earthquakes, tornadoes and deadly hurricanes attest to that reality. Unless we turn back to our first love, God, we are doomed. See II Chronicles 7:14.

My congregation often asks why the U.S. is not mentioned in the end-time prophesies of Ezekiel and Revelation. I believe it is because we will not turn away from our wicked ways and seek His face. In the meantime as the end nears, we must seek to harvest as many souls as we can from our nation which is headed toward third-world status. May God have mercy on our nation. Pray the our nation and for the peace of Israel. (John 1:12-13)

That title is not mine. It belongs to C.S. Lewis and is from The Problem of Pain delivered as one of three lectures at Riddell Memorial and was later published as The Abolition of Man.

Did it catch your attention? It did mine and in a big way. The concern over eating the apple itself is of no consequence. He offers, “This act of self-will on the part of the creature [humans], which constitutes an utter falseness to its true creaturely position, is the only sin that can be conceived as the Fall.”

It is the act of trurning away from God to self that fulfills the conditions for the Fall and entry of sin into the world. We have only to look inward and see the times our ‘self’ has caused us to sin and, in many instances, to harm others.

At this election time, we can see clearly how ‘self’ impacts the political arena. How do we see the character of each of the GOP candidates? How do we see the character of our President?

Think about what has happened since Ingersoll began his arguments against God and for Humanism. We have pushed God out of our deliberations, out of our very lives, out of our homes, and mostly out of our government. All that we have done is to compound the initial sin by increasing our acts of turning away from Him and toward pleasing ourselves.

Christians must stand up, take an active interest in the political process, and select God-fearing candidates. Why? Because the more godless politicians we send to our state and Federal governments, the more we stand to lose our Christian way of life and the very foundation of our Constitution. Get involved. Study the candidates. Work for those who have good character. Save our nation, one politician at a time.

Galatians 6:9; Pray for the peace of Israel

Oswald Chambers offers that it is all right to dream about things like goals and the future. But, when it comes to having received instruction from God we are to put those instructions into action. To delay and sit around dreaming about the possible outcomes of those actions is to procrastenate and possibly cause harm to or miss the outcome He desires. Who is in charge of you and me? Are we are the throne of our lives or is He?

I believe that is one of the causes of the corruptive ‘cancers’ plaguing our politicians. They are so inner-focused they have no room for service to Him. Continue to pray for the return of our nation to the Godly principles upon which it was established. Pray for the peace of Israel. Galatians 6:9