I have recently been faced with the question of the burning of the Qur'an by one particular church group. I too have a hatred of the Qur'an as any believer should. However, I wonder if the burners of this book have acted arrogantly and self righteously without consideration to what the Bible teaches. Christ never burned anyone's idols. He spoke against them and preached repentance toward God and clearly stated the Good News of salvation to those who would place their trust in Him.

Could it be that those who would buy Qur'an's just to burn, are arrogantly and figuratively flailing their finger in the face of another pagan religion just to enrage them. I am not interested in enraging people with meaningless ritualistic activity that are designed to deliberately start wars.

My desire is to preach the gospel as Christ and the Apostles did, for the purpose of seeing souls saved. I will speak against the Qur'an and forbid it from our home, but when it belongs to someone else I leave it alone and I would not spend God's money wastefully on books that I intended to burn simply to aggravate others.

If we were to think that it was a good deed to burn the Qur'an, then why have we not been burning all wicked books, magazines and videos. We would have to burn down stores and libraries, to rid ourselves of all the evil that persists in our culture. This was not our calling from the Lord.

He would have wanted us to stand outside the establishments and preach His Word, speaking repentance, love and forgiveness. When Paul got off the ship in Athens Greece, he was grieved at the 100,000 statues that were representations of the false gods of that region. He did not seek to destroy their gods, rather he sought to preach, teach and pray for the souls that he would be encountering. He used one of their own monuments to one of their gods. He introduced them to "the unknown God" the true God.

I am in complete support of pagans who get saved building fires and burning their own idols. But I do not believe that we do God any service in burning the idols of others, merely as an attempt to "force" them into the kingdom. Their idols are nothing, we need not be intimidated by them, but we should care enough about the soul of the pagan to preach against their idols.

Let them make the choice and then it will be real. Force creates false converts and even hardens hearts that might otherwise be open to the Word of the Lord.

Let's put more energy into the saving of souls than the destruction of dead worthless idols. We do not want to bring more attention to the idols and false books, but minimize them by overwhelming the pagan with the truth of God's Holy Word and His Holy Book.

Marriage: Can we live until death with the same partner?

My husband and I have been married in our first marriage for over 40 years now, and have been against divorce and remarriage all that time. However it is sad when I hear from people who say "you must have had a wonderful marriage to be able to stay together that long." NOT!!!

We love each other very much but we have had problems over the years that seemed overwhelming. Each of us came from ungodly families, that didn't teach us what a good marriage looked like, so we floundered for several years and learned many lessons, because of our commitment, we did learn, the only other option was to live in turmoil until we die. 

We were not always godly, but through it all we could not divorce. Now we share a great marriage, it has it's ups and downs, but we have chosen to love one another as Christ commanded, it was not always so for us. 

We should not be teaching young people how to have a perfect marriage, we should be teaching them how to work through problems with the underlying foundational truth of "no divorce, no matter what." 

So many people could have made it through the marriage, had they been determined to resolve rather than run and most importantly of all, give their troubles to the Lord. If only one person in the marriage does this, there can be peace even if the other will not. 

One person once said to me that it is better to divorce than live in a marriage where there is always fighting. My response was "there is another option....one of you stop fighting." That would only be the beginning. After that there is prayer and confession of sin. 

It can be done, both sets of parents in our families were married 60 and 65 years and our aunts and uncles before them 65 and 75 years. YES, it can be done, we just have to chose it.

God Is Always Faithful We Can Count On Him

Many years ago, I was taught and believed that we had a choice to get saved or to walk away from that salvation.  I had no sense of permanency or security in my walk with My Lord.  I questioned whether someday I may do something that God was displeased with and He would no longer love me and cast me aside for whatever that sin was.  I had such a hard time believing that I had the strength to carry on for Him or that I could measure up, after all, my life was fraught with the indoctrination from my childhood that I was of no value to my family or my community.  How could I ever be loved by God, how could He knowing me, love me.  I questioned God on numerous occasions, what sin would separate us, how many sins or how big did they have to be to incur the wrath of God, that He would throw me away.  

I thought, what kind of God would tell us we could lose our salvation and then not even describe to us the detailed criteria of what can cause us to be thrown away.  

I believed this teaching because this is what people did, if I didn't measure up, they went away and rejected me, so I had the impression that this is what God does too.  I begged God to love me differently than people did, which didn't seem like love at all.  One slip up in my character and the people disappeared.  They not only disappeared but had no compulsion to come to me to try to save me, to snatch me from the firebrand.  

Is it possible that our view of God and our interpretation of Scripture comes from our observations about people and their responses to us?  I am grateful that God is not like people. His ways are so far above mankind, that we have no ability to understand or carry out His righteousness.  We must have the Holy Spirit to walk with Him and we must possess the Holy Spirit if we are to remain.  If the Holy Spirit left us, as people do, and we are not saved by our works, then how would we ever get back again to possess the Holy Spirit, our works would not save us to come back. Oh my what a dilemma I struggled with before the Lord opened my eyes.  I saw no evidence in the Word that the Holy Spirit hopped in and out of people like a jumping jack.  

I am convinced without doubt that we cannot lose our salvation. If we believe that God saved us after we chose and confessed our sin, and that Christ said in Ephesians 2:8 "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; [it is] the gift of God," then we have to believe that God is the one who saves and we do not save ourselves through our works. If we know that we can not save ourselves through our own works then we have to know that we cannot keep ourselves by our works.

When God saves us, He gives us what we desire and that is to be forgiven and to be saved, then He does the work of saving, He does the work of cleansing and He does the work of keeping. God said 2 Corinthians 5:17, "Therefore, if anyone [is] in Christ, [he is] a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." God changes us into something we were not before.

We are however trapped in this body of death, Our soul has been overtaken by the Holy Spirit of God. Ephesians 1:13-14 says "In Him you also [trusted], after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory."

I would like us to take a look at some of the words in this verse, they are; Holy Spirit of Promise, Sealed, Guarantee, inheritance, purchased possession. All of these show that it is a done deal when we have been changed by God. When we realize that He changes us when we get saved, He makes two people one in marriage and He remains faithful to Israel in all His promises. All of these works are His and constant with His character. We cannot undo our salvation, and we don't want to. We cannot undo our marriage and if we are saved, we don't want to. God is a God of faithfulness when we are not.

We do sin after salvation because God said that no one is righteous no not one, this is why God had to seal us with His Holy Spirit, to keep us. It is a salvation by works and inconsistent to say that we can't save our self but we can do enough good works to keep ourselves. Christ can not come off the cross, He said it is finished. HE will not ever go back to the cross, because "it is finished."

Now the problem is that, we see people who claim to be saved and have walked away, but God said in Matthew 7:21-23, "Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord , Lord', shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, 'Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, and cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?' And then I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.'"

It is clear that many people who claim to be saved, will look so good that others looking on will not realize that they are not saved and never have been. In this passage God says "I NEVER knew you." They were never changed into a new creation even though they looked so good on the outside.

We do however sin, we are not sinless but we sin less, because God said that He is in the process of sanctification until the day we die. This is why God said in 1 John 2 "My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." An unsaved person does not have an advocate with the Father, only His children do. If we see someone living a lifestyle of sin without conscience about it, then they not saved. They may go to church, pray in front of people, and even.....get this....cast out demons in His name...but they have never been changed because they have never trusted Christ. They may even have lived a good life, but are doing it in the flesh rather than under the control of the Holy Spirit. For me this matter is settled. The Lord gave me the "smoking gun" scripture in Ephesians 1:13-14, that settles it completely for me.

My God told me, "I will never throw you away because you do not measure up, you could never measure up.  When you fall I will pick you up and bring you back"  I remember the story of the lamb who wanders off from his shepherd. The shepherd does not let him go to fall over cliffs and die; he goes after him and breaks the legs of the lamb.  He breaks his legs and then carries him so that the lamb learns to depend on the shepherd and will not continue to wander away after that.  God sometimes breaks our legs as believers, but he never throws us away as people do. He is pure love and knows the propensity of man to wander.  

Do we love people as God loves us or do we love people the way humanity does, with disinterest in one another.  Do we do the easy thing focusing on feelings and fun, rather than the hard work of rebuke and discipline praying for and hoping that our loved one will be restored?  God does walk away from rebellious pretenders, but He never walks away from His lambs.

Helping the Disturbed Character In Our Lives

http://www.manipulative-people.com/facilitating-change-in-irresponsible-characters/

Can't We Just Be Honest and Open?

http://www.manipulative-people.com/another-look-at-manipulation-tactics/

Who Should Christians Follow

Once again I have been faced with the question of modern idolatry in the form of dedication to a man. This has become so common, more than any other sin, this one has overtaken our society by storm. God said that we are not to "say you are of Paul or Apollos." 1 Corinthians 1:12 If we are completely dedicated to Christ then we could never say "I follow the teachings of ......." pertaining to a man. If we quote a man's writing more than the teachings of Christ or find ourselves unable to express our Christianity solely in terms of Christ and Him alone, then we have an idol. Christ was very clear that He wanted us to see only Him. I am reminded of the days when our children were growing up and I was attempting to instruct them, and their eyes were wandering all around the room, distracted by the other people in the house. I had to continually admonish them to "look at me while I am talking to you." As their eyes and hearts were diverted to other people and things, I had to be vigilant about bringing their attention back to me. I knew that if I allowed them to be distracted, they would not carry out my wishes or learn any important lessons. This is how we, as stubborn children, are with God. He is continually nudging us to come back to focus on Him and only Him. As long as we will not let go of our human idols, we cannot progress any further. The challenge today is to practice for one week resolving not to mention the name of any man in reference to Biblical principles. Could we go through an entire week, only speaking of Christ and His principles without mentioning a man's name in conjunction with our study? What a novel idea!