Author: watchstandpray

155 – Perfection Is a Direction, not the Minimum

I attended college at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. It has many problems as does every institution. Thankfully, it’s not a “church”, it’s just an organization with the founding mission to “create gapmen” who intellectually and academically “stand in the gap” between over-educated preachers and the laity that just wants to understand God’s Word.

Moody teaches Bible, they don’t obey it perfectly since no one can. But, the world needs more people who know the Bible. In the end Moody, with all its problems, makes the world a better place by producing students who know God’s word inside and out. It helps. I would never ax that help just because it’s not finished arriving at perfection.

I won’t excuse injustice and I occasionally chase down wrongdoing with a fierce wrath, if so provoked. But, I’m glad Moody is there, injecting a world with people who actually know what God’s Word actually is and says. Part of the message of the Bible is imperfection. We are imperfect. If someone has a problem, saying so only proves that the person exists. Of course, if you have a solution to the problem, that’s another story. But, “Lay down, cry, and die,” is not a solution, it’s a sentencing.

So, when you address problems and people addressing problems, pay attention to whether a “complaint” is acting like a proposed solution or if it is an attempt to deliver a cease and desist order. Where we are concerned with the core topic of the fact that sin will always exist in every one of us in this lifetime, the only thing that needs to cease and desist is the expectation that people be perfect in order to exist.

Sunday morning “Churchianity” is one of the best—if not the very best—at expecting perfection, but only achieving pretended perfection, which is nothing more than pretension. Once a religious institution of a religion that teaches “imperfect pursuit of perfection” pretends to be perfect, it’s time for it to cease and desist.

Only God is perfect. The most godly people can do is pursue perfection. Requiring perfection in order to pursue perfection just doesn’t make sense. Being imperfect, we need reminding.

154 – Test Everything

Marketing must match its product, both the content and the method. Sometimes, “not marketing” at all is the best kind of marketing. We never know. Never believe someone who claims to tell you the right way of marketing a product. If a business must reinvent itself every five years—and introduce new products every year—and come out with multiple advertisements for each product—that puts marketing on the more extreme list of things that need constant reinvention.

Some skills and theories never change, such as color theory and typing speed. But, non-changers are few. Think beyond the billboard itself. Is a visual ad even necessary? What about strategic logo placement or contributing to a needy open source software project? To some extent, the best products market themselves.

Of course, when you have a hammer in your hand, everything looks like a nail. That explains the marketers who want everything to be done via one specific action plan of, say, social media. Those marketers happen to be familiar with that particular marketing avenue: social media. Stay shy of such people, they want to sell you something.

In order to know if something works, it must be tested. Whether in product development or software development, flaws are found by trial, error, and stress. Tradition carries beauty and wisdom, but even traditions can be tested and come out wanting. It is the test, not the tradition, that proves a thing valuable.

Writing endless blog posts just because everyone else is writing endless blog posts doesn’t mean consumers will have more time to read every piece of blogosophere spam—though many copywriters would have us think so. Copywriting is useful, but not over-useful. Stay focused on your mission—on your pivotal purpose.

Marketing “lets people know”. We market ourselves all the time. It’s called “fashion”. Economic recessions zero impact on cosmetic sales. That doesn’t prove makeup is a “need”, but that individual marketing is a marketable “need”. The same physiological programming that drives people to spend emergency money on hairspray also drives those same people to post pictures and “statuses” on the “bragosphere”. We know that because recessions test markets. Test everything and everything will make more sense.

153 – Reject Sympathy

People in your life will pretend to offer your sympathy. Reject it. Be kind. Be thankful. They may be friends who will be loyal to you a long time. But, don’t let sympathy go to your heart.

No one can sympathize with your situation like Jesus. He grew up human and died on a Roman cross. Jesus knows pain and hardship better than anyone else. Friends will encourage you, everyone needs this. Sometimes you must be the friend to encourage others. But, sympathy misplaced can lower your standards. If you need a shoulder to cry or lean on, don’t turn it into a crutch.

When Frodo and the fellowship departed the caves after crossing the Bridge of Khazad Dum, where Gandalf had just fallen, they did not have the luxury of sympathy. “Giving them a moment” would have spelled their death.

Many people offer sympathy, understanding, excuses, lowered standards and, in the end, if you accept and act on those opportunities to pause and grieve for yourself, you will be overrun. This is why quiet times and regular prayer are vital.

Spend every waking moment you can in a state of fellowship with Jesus through his Spirit. When you have a strong emotional connection to Jesus, you don’t the usual, addictive, seductive, ensnaring sympathies from people who can’t help you anyway. Unwarranted sympathy is, after all, an impostor—a counterfeit—of real understanding and fellowship that only comes from the one, perfect human—the one human who can identify with you the most.

Jesus understands you. He knows your situation. When only one set of footprints mark the sands of painful times, those were the times when he carried you. Don’t give into self-sorrow and drop your guard along with your standards, all in the name of so-called “sympathy”.

Cry when you need to; Jesus gave us tears. Cry with your friends. Deal with your pain. Talk with your friends and open your heart. But, don’t let sympathy grow into an undue addiction. Anything good can be used in the wrong setting and, sympathy notwithstanding, end up baiting you into a state of weakness that you might not grow out of this side of Eternity.

152 – Jesus the Bridegroom

The most consistent illustration and description of Jesus in his relationship to Christians and to Israel is the bridegroom.

Don’t make the novice mistake of thinking that this is literal—whether reading about Jesus as the bridegroom in the Bible or reading an article about Jesus as the bridegroom in the Bible. It is a figurative relationship, not at all erotic, and a good Bible student should easily recognize it as such. Jesus does not literally marry any of us; he had no wife or literal romance during his life on Earth according to the Bible, only in ancient, demeaning fiction written by non-Christians.

The Bible dedicates two entire books to marriage, making it the most important illustration for understanding God’s Son.

The Book of Hosea records a living example of the steadfast love of a good husband—like God was—toward the unfaithful nation of Israel. This also applies to us as Christians who constantly make foolish and regrettable mistakes, yet God still loves us and works through circumstances to bring us to have a healthy, faithful love back toward Him.

Song of Songs uses the “superlative genitive” noun case—where “of” makes this mean “the greatest song of all songs that ever were and ever will be”. It is about love in marriage. But, combined with Hosea, what John the Baptist said about Jesus, what Jesus said about himself, and Revelation’s description of Jesus as the bridegroom, the Song of Songs was a foreshadowing picture of the personality of God’s great love for us. Whatever we feel about ourselves, no matter how insecure, God’s love for us is greater than we could ever convince Him to have.

John the Baptist describes Jesus as the bridegroom and talks about the “friend of the bridegroom”, which is wedding terminology. Jesus told multiple parables about wedding customs and gave us the Holy Spirit as a kind of wedding engagement gift, a down payment for his promise.

God is a ruling Father and His Son, Jesus, is a bridegroom “given” to us. Jesus has all the power and authority, yet he is our friend who loves us in a deep way that no human terms fully describe.

Song of Songs, Hosea, Matthew 9:14-15; 22:1-14; 25:1-13, Luke 5:33-35; 14:7-11, John 3:27-30, Revelation 19:7; 21:2 ; 22:17

151 – Heavenly Fascination

Pop culture has always tried to mimic the grand splendor of Heaven. From the Garden of Eden, devils have spread lies as truth, “wowing” humanity with their twisted perversions of the awesomeness beyond Earth. Those ideas have always floated around society and literature in whatever form of mass media exists at any particular time, whether in lore, poetry, music, theater, books, comics, or video.

Whatever imagery of Heaven and the heavens beyond Earth you see in pop culture, the real thing is better. Know the real thing by knowing God’s Word.

Images of Heaven and truth from pop culture were not invented by pop culture, they were invented by God and expressed in Heaven before Earth was made. Even mischaracterizations of God and Heaven carry some truth. These not only include beauty, fantasy, and technology, but they also include ideas like Zen. Just as music and math began as man-made religions, many other worthy sciences are only religious because of misunderstanding. Zen, wisdom of Buddhism, psychology, and other “life sciences” hold fragmented truth, just as Thomas Aquinas said, “All truth is God’s truth.” The calmness of Zen is better known by the peace Jesus made when he calmed the waves. That peace first existed in Jesus’s prayer life.

Don’t allow secular sciences outdo your own diligence. Pray in a way that takes your heart and mind to the place of peace that’s greater than the peace of Zen; God’s Word will tell you what it looks like as you study diligently. Just as any apprentice must work and study to become a master, so God the Master expects you to study and perform the grunt work that will make you strong and teach you to calm your heart to enjoy the peace of the moment.

Part of knowing Heaven involves knowing peace and stillness. No stillness is greater than the stillness God spoke of in which to know Him, “Be still and know that I AM God.’

Heaven itself is an expression of God’s own imagination. With God’s peace in your heart, your imagination will blossom into reflections greater than Heaven. As you become fascinated with God’s beauty, pop culture’s “lesser” expressions will bore you.

150 – Unknown Nondiligence

There are a few constants in life. One of them is said to be, “It always gets done.” This means that whatever the task is, whatever the deadline, be patient because it will get achieved on time. But, this is false. This is not a constant of life. “It” does not always get done because we don’t always do “it”.

Things only get done with two working forces: God and Man. If God doesn’t breathe on our labors, then we are just wasting our time. But, we must have labors if God is to breathe on them. Not even God can steer a parked car.

The ungodly worldview sees tension between work and prayer. Some people work, some people pray. That’s the majority paradigm. Beware of the “major-minor” version of this: Some people mostly work, some people mostly pray. It’s just the same, though.

The Pilgrims had this problem. When the mainmast broke, the “Saints” prayed while the “Strangers” said, “God won’t fix it, we will.” That polarity was all too common in the centuries that followed. Actually, everyone—everyone who will die and be judged by the Creator God—must give work and prayer an equal priority. We may be known for one or the other in our vocations and public lives, but in the wholeness of our private lives, our friends and family must know that prayer and work have an equal place in our offices, workshops, dens, living rooms, minds, journals, and hearts.

Many people live without diligence toward both work and prayer, never knowing how much they miss out on. Difficulties come along, God carries them, they tell about His provision; they survive the very hardships they caused. Sometimes, God sent those storms to test our lives, as He did with Job. But, other times, we brought about our own failure by not being prepared by our diligence in work and our diligence in prayer—our diligence in understanding God’s morals in the Bible and our diligence in living out those morals. God stays with us through whatever problems we cause, so we rarely see that our own nondiligence caused them—and we never find out what we missed out on.

Psalm 127:1, Matthew 25:1-13

149 – Bible: The Best Academic Study

Nothing will prepare you to read and understand poetry, stories, culture, history, and any literature better than reading the Bible. This is because of the Bible’s quality, time span, depth, and complexly woven story line.

The Bible begins at the start of recorded human history, even earlier. Adam and Eve lived before 4,000 BC; 1,500 years passed before Noah and the flood, but only ten chapters passed in Genesis. The rest of Genesis spans another thousand years. That covers many vital events of history in just a few short writings.

Then, those events prepared all other events through the rest of the Bible. Moses came along almost two thousand years after Adam and Eve, over two thousand years before Jesus’s day. Everyone in the Old Testament learned about Moses—thereby shaping and bringing context to their stories.

One by one, more events unfold in the Bible. Kingdoms and families rose and fell for hundreds of years, many of them with little mention. But in those eras, people told stories of the people before them, Moses among many others. Those people died and people in the next era told stories about them—and the next era—all with little mention. Some of this is recorded in the Bible. Different events—centuries and millennia apart—all different cultures that were built on the previous—they would talk about the societies before them. This shaped who they were. They were all connected.

Then, we finally read a longer story in the Bible with more details. Noah was linked to Ruth. Samson was connected to Jonah. The more we study, the more connections and themes we see. The more we learn about what archaeology says about those times, the more we see how accurate the Bible is. We progressively learn more about this complex, interlinked story; but we also learn more about history—our real history.

Then, we have poetry, wisdom literature, cultures, and ancient languages. These also connect to the real events of our history. By understanding what’s in the Bible, we can understand any other literature much more easily because nothing runs as deep. Yet, those who don’t study the Bible never understand why diligent Bible students do.