Guidelines For Living

The God of the Bible is a deeply personal God.  The Bible tells us that he “knit us together in our mother’s womb.”  He knows the numbers of hairs on our heads, knows when we sit down and rise up and knows what we’re thinking from afar (Luke 12:7, Ps. 139).  And it is exactly because He knows us so well that He has compassion on us and offers us grace in our weaknesses.  Think about it:  He is intimately aware of your unique struggles.  He knows, that perhaps, you need grace for anxiety because of a tumultuous childhood.  Maybe He knows all about about your desire to impress others because, underneath it all, you feel incompetent.  You need grace to comprehend His great love for you and to live in His acceptance.

It’s a hard fact to come to grips with:  we are living in an evil world and that means pain is involved.  The Bible points out to us that, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9 KJV). Deceitful, wicked hearts produce evil deeds and followers of Jesus are not spared the spill-over of this evil.  In fact, Christians should really be the least surprised when life turns upside down, knowing that our world is temporarily ruled by a god (that’s with a lower-case “g”) who does not have our best interests at heart.  “Satan… is the god of this world,” says the Bible in 2 Corinthians 4:4.

It is a medical fact:  Either you will learn to control your emotions or else your emotions will control you.  When your emotions are out of control, they will create havoc with your physical body.  David Messenger is a physician who has specialized in structural medicine.  Speaking of the effect of your emotions on your wellbeing, Dr. Messenger says, "Negative emotions are energy‑draining, mind stifling and completely counterproductive.  Allowing oneself to hang onto and revel in the bondage of bitterness, anger, resentment and hatred is a most self‑destructive way of living.  Bitterness, with its subsequent anger, resentment, hatred and then self‑pity, is the emotional disturbance I see most."

How many friends do you need?  No, we’re not talking about Facebook friends, but the real thing.  Social science researchers quantify friendship types by the levels of relationship depth, starting with acquaintances, casual friends, close friends and then, intimate friends.  Acquaintances are people you make small talk with, maybe at the mailbox or the gym.  You might share an activity with a casual friend but probably wouldn’t see them outside of that activity.  Close friends are who you call when life turns upside down or something amazing happens to you, no matter what time of the day or night it is.  But intimate friends are far and few.  An intimate friend, hopefully would include a mate; this is someone you trust with your deepest secrets and your most vulnerable self, described by an old Arab proverb as, “One to whom we may pour out the contents of our hearts, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away!” 

So you think that you could never succumb to moral temptation, do you? Paul didn’t apparently think so or else he wouldn’t have given the advice he did to the effect that we are to guard against temptation by not allowing ourselves to be in a position of being vulnerable. In other words, you prevent the possibility by closing the door ahead of time and pushing the furniture against it, and leaving the lights on.

What prompts a person to return something that was stolen years before?  The influential weapon that governs our conduct is called conscience.  On the fifth floor of the U.S. Treasury Building in Washington D. C. is a room which contains thousands of letters.  It contains the files of the federal "Conscience Fund."  This strange gift fund dates back to the year 1811 when an anonymous citizen wrote that he was "suffering the most painful pangs of conscience" because he had stolen from or defrauded the U.S. government.  He eased the pain by remitting $6.  In the 175 years that the fund has been in existence, $5.7 million dollars has been contributed.  However, “The sincerity of some donors' repentance can be uncertain, writes Dave Philipps, “as demonstrated by a received letter reading, ‘Dear Internal Revenue Service, I have not been able to sleep at night because I cheated on last year's income tax. Enclosed find a cashier's check for $1,000. If I still can't sleep, I'll send you the balance.’"[1]   [1] Philipps, Dave (April 10, 2005). "Would you tip the IRS?". The Gazette.  

Some 40 miles from Rome, strategically located between the Aegean and the Mediterranean, lay the beautiful city of Corinth.  Unlike Athens, where there were family connections and traditions, Corinth was a new city with fast money and loose morals. In Paul’s day to call somebody a Corinthian was desultory or debasing—a pejorative term that made someone fighting mad.

Enough.  That’s the elusive measurement so many of us chase after, hour after hour, day in and day out, year after year.  Can you relate to the confession of social activist, Lynne Twist? 

Question: Would you hire a contractor to build a house for you who comes up with the cheapest bid, though you have read about his being sued for cheating on materials he has used for others, substituting inferior products for the more expensive ones called for in the specifications?

Your greatest enemy, in all probability, is within.  It’s the nagging doubt, the belief that you just don’t have what it takes to live the Christian life.  Most of the time, we can keep the voices quiet but, especially when we are tired or discouraged or afraid, they invade our minds.  Writer and speaker Elisabeth Elliott used to say, “Our enemy delights in disquieting us.  Our Savior, our Helper, delights in quieting us.”  The Bible says that our enemy “...the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).  Maybe you don’t have to be convinced that He is the enemy of your soul, yet quite often we don’t fully understand how he often defeats us by influencing our thinking.