Whispers of Truth

Isaiah 55:8-9 speaks of a distinct difference between the way God operates and the way humans operate: “For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts” (NASB). While I cannot understand God's thoughts, I cannot help but compare the way he operates with the way human leaders operate countries. In my favorite dictionary, Noah Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language , ‘economy’ is defined as follows: 1. “Primarily, the management, regulation and government of a family or the concerns of a household.”   2. “A frugal and judicious use of money; that management which expends money to advantage, and incurs no waste; frugality in the necessary expenditure of money. It differs from parsimony, which implies an improper saving of expense. Economy includes also a prudent management of all the means by which property

       The past few weeks have been full of the activities that signal the end of the school year. We have attended awards ceremonies, band concerts, choir concerts, and other countless activities related to graduation. My oldest son has done well in school and will be attending Auburn University (War Eagle!) in the fall on a Presidential Scholarship combined with another full scholarship through the engineering department. He finished his high school career with an Advanced Diploma, in the top ten of his class (out of 142), a member of the National Honor Society and Spanish Honor Society. My youngest son, a tenth grader, finished his year strong by making the highest grades on his finals in Alg. II with Trig, Spanish I, and Chemistry. On another graduation front, my youngest daughter graduated from the eighth grade as the top student of her class (five years running). To add to that, my young ward finished her school year with all A s and B s after transferring schools in February an

Sometimes life offers its pleasant surprises. Last night, my oldest son graduated from high school, which is a major milestone (one down three to go . . .). Family often gathers for events such as this, and mine was no exception. We all met at a local eatery to enjoy some time together before the ceremony. The surprise was sitting down and then seeing my sister-in-law peep her head around the corner. She came all the way from Nicaragua where she serves as a missionary, and she managed to keep it a secret from us. It was an unexpected blessing I will not ever forget.           I thought of unexpected blessings and pleasant surprises as I studied Philemon this week for Sunday school. We have just completed a study of Colossians where Paul mentions Onesimus, whom he considered his “faithful and beloved brother” (Col. 4:9, NASB) in the faith. This is not terribly surprising unless you know the rest of the story, which is our next unit of study. The letter of Philemon was written as an appe

       Submission has gotten a really bad rap. In today’s society it is the equivalent of a four-letter word. The sad part is that women (and men) really don’t understand the purpose of submission. The word submit comes from the Greek hupotasso , which is a military term that deals with ordering or arranging troops under a leader (Thayer and Smith), but it is really not used in a domineering sense in Colossians 3:18, which reads: “Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord” (NASB). These verses, taken alone or out of context, are easily misused, but in the context of the passage on family relations, it becomes clear that godly submission is intended to be a blessing to all parties involved: wife, husband and God. Colossians 3:19 relates the equally difficult requirement for a husband: “Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.” When Colossians 3:18 AND 19 are paired, they are a beautiful picture of what God intends for a marriage: unity, ha

Isaiah 46 contrasts the burdens of the world with the One who bears our burdens. The Israelites (like us today) stubbornly clung to the things of the world when they had God within reach, but in this chapter, God reminds them of the lack of power the idols of Babylon had to save. The burden of worshiping things that cannot save is oppressive: “The things that you carry are burdensome, a load for the weary beast. They stooped over, they have bowed down together; they could not rescue the burden, but have themselves gone into captivity” (Is. 46:2, NASB). There is also irony in the idea that the Babylonians were bowed down with the weight of the worthless idols that they now carried on their own backs as beasts of burden. The Babylonians, steeped in idol worship, had not been saved by their idols—rather their idols became burdens to them. This contrasts sharply with God’s message to His chosen people (and us) throughout the book of Isaiah. The One True God carries His children instead

Have you ever bought a small battery for a camera or watch only to open the package and find that it doesn’t fit the device for which you purchased it? If you have, you understand the frustration of purchasing something with a specific purpose in mind and finding that it fails to meet the need at hand. It’s utterly frustrating because not only have you wasted resources, but you also have a device that isn’t functioning as it should and a battery wasting its power in the back of a drawer full of useless items that might come in handy someday. As random as this seems, I thought of this as I was reading through a passage in Isaiah this week. God created man with a specific purpose in mind—to bring Him glory. Man utterly failed at that when Satan entered into the garden, lied to man (and woman), enticed him to eat of the forbidden fruit, and disabled man from his intended purpose. Fortunately for us, God purchased us with the precious blood of His only Son so that we could once again fu

We are easily taken captive by what we see. I’m reminded of this as I read God’s first commandment to the children of Israel only a few short months after their exodus from Egypt: “You shall have no other gods before Me” (Ex. 20:3, NKJV). God reminds them that He is a jealous God who will not share His glory with any other (vs. 5). The fact that the Israelites were coming out of Egypt, where people worshiped some 175 gods with almost two hundred alternate names, made this commandment of paramount importance. The idea of bowing down to and worshiping carved images was not foreign to the Israelites, but it is foreign to most of us today. Unfortunately, like the Israelites, we too have blended with a culture that should be foreign to us to the point that we flagrantly worship idols alongside it instead of the one true God. How can this be if we’re His chosen ones? It often begins with seeing something and desiring it, and soon what we desire becomes idolatry—we place that thing (an act

“See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world rather than according to Christ” (Col. 2:8, NASB).           How many of us like to imagine ourselves held captive to anything in this world? I know I do not like the thought of being a prisoner to anything in this world. One of the demands of our world is that we have its wisdom—obtained through education, of course. The problem is that what the world considers wisdom is foolishness in God’s eyes, as I Cor. 1:25 asserts: “ The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.”   When we soak in the world’s wisdom, we are ingesting something that is not true—it is empty deception in the tradition of men—something man made up, not God. Are we handcuffed by or chained to something that was never meant to control us? Are we so busy enjoying something that isn’t eternal that we are missing

        As I've been studying Genesis, I've returned each night to a specific passage that has rung through my head in the wake of the Easter season. When I consider what God has done for me, it is entirely overwhelming.         In Genesis 22, God tells Abraham: "Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains of which I will tell you" (NASB). Abraham's faith astounds me (maybe that's why God credits it to him as righteousness. . .), and I cannot begin to imagine the level of sacrifice he was willing to give to the God he willingly followed to places unknown while waiting for the promised covenant child God finally provided in Isaac. The part that keeps coming back to me is when Isaac trustingly looks at Abraham and says, "My father! . . . .Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" (Gen. 22:7). We are not told Isaa

“For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the boastful pride of life, is not of the Father, but is from the world” (1 John 2:15-16, NASB) I thought of this verse over the past week as I began another journey through the Word in a recently purchased chronological Bible. I saw a picture of the destructive nature of sin in the story of Lot and his family (Genesis 12, 13, 14, and 19). While we know that our choices have consequences, Lot’s story seems almost metaphorical for our country and this generation that is so steeped in its sin. Like Lot living in Sodom, America has tolerated the sin around us, gotten carried away by it, made excuses for it, sacrificed whatever had to go to keep from moving away from it, and will succumb to the destructive wrath of God if we are not careful. Lot’s journey is attached to Abram’s as he obeys God’s call to leave his relatives and his father’s house to go to an unknown land; why Abram took Lot is unclear, but t