Reading the remarkable responses on the faces of the precious people at Safe Haven on Saturday night, I can fairly predict with pinpoint accuracy that in this PODCAST, you are about to hear a message about money like you’ve NEVER heard one before.
And that’s a good thing. A very good thing.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus invoked one word — abundantly familiar to His listeners; utterly foreign to us — which has profound implications for our lives today.
I’ll be right upfront with you. I believe that as a whole, our contemporary Christian culture in America has a woefully underdeveloped and (if I may say so) faulty theology of money, especially as it relates to the local church.
In my never-ending effort to approach Jesus’ teachings with absolutely no preconceived conclusions about what He taught, I must tell you that what Jesus said in His day is for us in our day revolutionary.
We cannot change our contemporary Christian culture — the way we “do” ministry in America; the way we pay for ministry in America — but we can surely change our personal practices when it comes to how we, and to whom we, give our money.
Let the conversation begin.
Please note that depending upon your web browser and connection speed, it may take up to 60 seconds for this PODCAST to begin to play.
HAPPY LISTENING, and please “Share” this link — deweybertolini.com — to this podcast/blog with your friends.
God bless!
This is going to be fun, and oh-so-instructive.
This is the kind of a lesson I LOVE to teach.
Did you realize that in Matthew 5:18, Jesus made one of the single most dramatic, declarative statements He would ever make?
In one sweeping sentence that we explained at length last week, Jesus affirmed the Bible — every book, chapter, verse, word, letter — as absolute truth.
Through the process of Revelation, whereby God revealed Truth to His writers, and the process of Inspiration, whereby God guided His writers to write down that Truth w/o error, we now hold in our hands a precious book that 2 Timothy 3:16 (CEV) rightly calls “God’s Word.”
Revelation. Inspiration. In this PODCAST, we consider together a matter of Interpretation. How to understand the Bible… properly.
#WhatDoesItMean???
Because the sad fact is this: By stringing a few unrelated verses together, people can literally make the Bible say anything they want it to say. Anything! And they do.
We.Do.Not. We have far too much respect for the Bible to play fast and loose with its divinely inspired text.
Please note that depending upon your web browser, it might take up to 60 seconds for the podcast to begin to play.
HAPPY LISTENING!
Get ready to be encouraged. Super-encouraged, truth be known.
I say this because THE THING that everybody wants (and I say “everybody” without any fear of contradiction, without any worry of exaggeration)… THE THING that everybody wants is readily available, and ours for the asking.
It’s just that so many people have no idea what it is they really want. But trust me, we all want this…
You could call it “The Search for the Holy Grail.”
The Holy Grail: defined in two ways by our friends at the Webster Dictionary website:
1. In its formal usage: The cup/chalice from which Jesus supposedly drank in the Upper Room during the Last Supper, sought after (some would say) protected throughout the Middle Ages by the Knights Templar.
Which is NOT the Holy Grail to which I refer.
2. Informal usage: Something that we all very much want, but that is very hard to receive or to achieve.
Which is indeed the Holy Grail to which I do refer.
However, I would dispute the part about “very hard” to receive or to achieve.
As we are about to discover in this PODCAST, it’s not hard at all to find and to enjoy that Holy Grail — that which we all so desperately want and need (even if we don’t realize what the “that” is for which we are so desperately searching).
Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for the podcast to begin to play. HAPPY LISTENING!!!
Why do some people say the earth is millions of years old, and others say it’s only thousands of years old? I am so confused. I hear one thing in church, and another thing at school. Why can’t science and the Bible agree?
What great questions, asked by a junior higher at camp. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE these kinds of questions.
Believe it or not, the answer can be found in one simple little verse buried in the 1st chapter of the 1st book of the Bible, Genesis 1:11 (New Living Translation).
Then God said, “Let the land sprout with vegetation—every sort of seed-bearing plant, and trees that grow seed-bearing fruit.
Do you see the answer there? I didn’t think so.
OK, then try this, Genesis 1:20-21.
Then God said, “Let the waters swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.” So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird—each producing offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.
Still don’t see it? Well then, let’s try one more, Genesis 1:25.
God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind. And God saw that it was good.
Anything grab you about those three examples? What should grab you is this: God created a FULLY-FUNCTIONING (or mature) planet and universe.
At the moment God created plants, they were fully grown, bearing seeds, and able to provide food for the animals He would next create.
When God created birds and fishes, the oceans and lakes and rivers were instantly teaming with them. Birds were immediately flying through the air; fish were swimming in the oceans.
When God created the animals, they were immediately able to walk the earth, eat the food, and reproduce.
The same can be said of Adam and Eve who were immediately told to reproduce and populate the planet (Genesis 1:28).
Do you see it? God created a fully-functioning, mature planet.
This is what I want you to remember, one sentence that will absolutely harmonize what you hear in church and what you hear in school. Are you ready? Because when you read this next sentence, you will realize that there is absolutely NO CONTRADICTION between science and the Bible. Here it comes:
God created a YOUNG earth that looks very OLD.
Read that again:
God created a YOUNG earth that looks very OLD.
Think of this: If you had been onsite 5 seconds after God created Adam, you would not have seen a baby crying in a crib. You would have met a fully-grown adult, one who looked much older than he really was.
Same with the plants, fishes, and animals. And even the stars. Read it in Genesis 1:16-17.
God also made the stars. God set these lights in the sky to light the earth.
Now let me ask you a question. How could the stars, which are millions of lightyears away from the earth (which means that it should have taken millions of years for the light of those stars to reach the earth), be seen on the earth immediately after they were created? Unless the Universe appeared to be millions of years old, even though at the moment of its creation it was only a few seconds old?
God created a YOUNG earth that looks very OLD.
You might also be interested to note that the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world is Jericho. I’ve looked at the excavations. Archaeologists have taken that city down to bedrock. And guess what they found? Jericho dates to around 9,000 BC. Making the earth around 11,000 years old.
If you add up all of the years of genealogies in the Bible, and account for the fact that there are gaps in the genealogies (meaning that the genealogies in the Bible are not meant, and do not claim to be, 100% complete) you come to the same conclusion: The earth is around 11,000 years old.
Yet, if you date a rock or fossil, the test will indicate that it appears to be millions of years old. Why the difference? Because…
God created a YOUNG earth that looks very OLD.
No different than when people look at me and think I’m only 41, when I’m really 61! (Ha! Just kidding. If only that were true…)
You get the point.
So let not your heart be troubled, my friend. What you hear at church and read in the Bible is true: The earth is very young. AND what you hear at school and read in science books is true: The earth appears to be very old. No contradiction. No cause for concern. God had it all figured out right from the beginning.
He always does!
Hope this helps. And thanks for the question!
And by the way, here is a fascinating ARTICLE that goes right along with this one. Read and Enjoy!!!
Jesus pronounced this amazing blessing on His followers: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”
An amazing blessing to be sure. But is it an empty one? Who of us is actually “pure in heart”? Did not Jeremiah pronounce our hearts “desperately wicked”? Yes, I’m afraid he did.
And who of us can actually see God? Did not God tell Moses that “no one can see Me and live”? Yes, I’m afraid He did.
So what gives with this blessing, and its corresponding promise? Is this a bankrupt blessing? A pointless promise? At least as far as this life is concerned?
Oh, my friends. As you listen to this PODCAST, you are about to see some things that you have perhaps never seen before.
If this podcast is a blessing to you, PLEASE share it with your loved ones and friends. PLEASE “Like” it and “Share” it on Facebook and/or Twitter. I’d be most grateful, and so would they!
Please note that depending upon your web browser, it may take up to 60 seconds for the podcast to begin to play.
HAPPY LISTENING!!!
No junior higher should ever have to ask God a question like this. But that is exactly the question one middle school student asked when given the opportunity.
“If you could ask God one question, and knew that He would give you an honest answer, what would you ask?” One student’s response:
“Why is my mom a crackhead, and why does she choose drugs over me?”
As I often say when talking to students at camp, I hesitate to speak for God. But I have a hunch as to how He might answer this heart-rending question. I believe that He would say this:
There are many, many kinds of addictions — alcohol addiction, food addiction, pain killer addiction, pornography addiction, sex addiction, nicotine addiction, gambling addiction, so many others — including, in the case of your mom, drug addiction.
And the two things that absolutely break God’s heart about addictions are these:
1. Every single addiction causes things to break. Broken lives. Broken relationships. Broken hearts — your heart, and God’s heart. And once the pieces of our lives, relationships, and hearts lie broken, it’s so hard, if not impossible, ever to put them back together.
2. Addictions are so, so, so easily avoidable. No one is forced to become an addict. Meaning that countless lives, relationships, and hearts are so often broken needlessly.
Think of it this way: No one is born an addict. Your mom was not born a crackhead. Addictions were never a part of God’s plan for her life.
Addictions always begin in the exact same way: A person (your mom) made a choice. A seemingly innocent choice, or so it would seem at the time. A small choice. An apparently insignificant choice.
Of course, I don’t know the specific back story about your mom. But I do know, and over the years have met, scores of people with a variety of addictions. And so far as I know, every single one of them at some point in their past made a fateful choice.
Your mom was either at a point of desperation in her life, and thought that smoking or swallowing or inhaling or injecting a substance into her body would dull the pain for just a few precious moments. Or she was with a group of friends just out to have a good time. Her friends were making choices. And they somehow persuaded her to make the same choice. So wanting to fit in, while in her mind minimizing the consequences, she made a choice.
In either case, she made a choice that had disastrous consequences.
Disastrous because one choice will usually lead to a second, which will then result in a third, that then becomes a fourth. And as is true with every addiction, she eventually passed a point of no return. At some point, she yielded the control of her body to a foreign substance or improper impulse, something that God never intended for her to do.
And the result is a broken life, broken relationships (including her relationship with you), and broken hearts (including God’s and yours).
I say all of that to say this: It’s not personal. Your mom is not choosing a drug over you. She never did choose a drug over you. Please read that again because I want you hear that. She is not choosing drugs over you.
I have no doubt that if your mom could turn the clock back to the split-second before she made her first disastrous choice, she would make a different choice the second time around. Never have I ever had an addict tell me that they are thrilled that they became addicted, and that if they had it to do all over again, they would become addicted again. Never. And that “never” applies to your mom as well.
Now, I know that none of this can repair a broken life, broken relationships, and broken hearts. But it can do the following:
1. You need not think about your mom’s addiction in terms of acceptance or rejection, as if she is accepting drugs and rejecting you. Please believe me: It is not personal. If someone could wave a magic wand and release her of her addiction, your mom would jump at that opportunity. But as you’ll learn in life, there are no magic wands.
2. Your mom needs you now more than ever. Even if she seems to be pushing you away. She needs you to show her the highest form of love in the Universe. We call it unconditional love. The same kind of love that God has for you, and for your mom.
God loves your mom no matter what, addictions included. I mean, if anyone should feel rejection, as if your mom is choosing drugs over Him, it’s God. But He “gets” that it’s not personal with Him either. So in spite of her addiction, God loves your mom. You now have a golden opportunity to learn to love her in exactly the same way that God loves you. God will always love you, no matter what. As I learned a long time ago,
“People need love the most when they are the most unlovely.”
So does your mom.
3. Every time you feel the pain of your mom’s addiction, this can be your most powerful reminder and motivator to be very, very careful about the choices that you make. Choices about what you do with your body, and what you put into your body. Especially when you are tempted to think that you can get away with it, that you will beat the odds. The four deadliest words that I know for a Christ-follower are these:
“I can handle it.”
“I can handle it if I just take one drink.” “I can handle it if I take that one drug.” “I can handle it if…” I beg you, beg you to be very, very careful about what you do with your body, and what you put into your body. Because it’s a devastating thing to become a slave to any addiction.
I leave you with this. A simple instruction which, if your mom had read this and taken it to heart, would have protected her life, her relationships, and your heart from being broken. It may be too late for her; it is not yet too late for you.
The Apostle Paul was thinking of dear, precious people just like your mom when he wrote this:
Some of you say, “We can do anything we want to.” But I tell you that not everything is good for us. So I refuse to let anything have power over me… We are not supposed to do indecent things with our bodies. We are to use them for the Lord who is in charge of our bodies (1 Corinthians 6:12-13, Contemporary English Version).
If you will make a choice to live according to 1 Corinthians 6:12-13, then out of the ashes of your mom’s addiction will result the beauty of your God-honoring life.
The Latest News from Jerusalem
Dewey Bertolini 