Here’s the site: http://mattpalmer27.wordpress.com

Thanks!

The Lord has been particularly good to us recently. Our van doesn’t work and our car is a 5-speed, which stinks. (I realize that owning two cars makes us super-rich according to global standards, which is why I said the Lord has been particularly good to us recently.)

Anyway, we’ve been thinking and praying about what to do about it. And it’s funny how God does these things. We were looking around. We don’t want a car payment or anything like that. But even used cars are so expensive nowadays. And I got some good advice from a woman I work with who basically said, “Just pray about it! You never know how God will provide!”

So, Leah has a half-sister named Doris. And they haven’t really had a relationship in years because of some past issues with their step mother. It’s complicated. But they have recently reconnected. And they found out they quite like each other.

They are talking about a week and a half ago, and Leah is telling her about our car situation. And Doris says, “You know we own a used car lot, right? And we have this Ford Explorer that sounds exactly like what you’re looking for.” So we go down and look at it and we loved it. And they sold it to us for about $4000 less than its worth.

The reason I tell you all that is because I don’t know how to tell stories without back stories. Here’s what I’m getting at: We’re at this car lot this past Thursday getting this SUV and Leonard, Doris’ husband, has hired this guy who is a bi-polar ex-convict to work on his lot cleaning cars and other odd jobs. He’s basically giving him a second chance kind of thing. Well, this guy is washing our car, which we are trading in, and when he’s done he walks over to me and hands me this bracelet with this cross pendant on it, and he mumbles, “You left this on the rearview mirror, some kinda religious thing…thought it was important.”

I wanted to scream. SOME KIND OF RELIGIOUS THING??? IT’S THE CROSS!! IT’S THE ONLY EXECUTION DEVICE TO EVER BRING LIFE!!!

But I didn’t. Because he’s a bi-polar ex-convict. And I’m a wuss.

But all of this has just gotten me thinking. The cross he handed me was a pretty cross. It was given to Leah as a gift. But let’s just think about that for a minute. A pretty cross?

The cross was anything but pretty. If you would have been there, if you had seen Him hanging on the cross, with blood running down his face from the crown of thorns, with the railroad spikes through his wrists and feet, with the blood from his skinless back running down the back of his legs and dripping to the ground beneath him, you would have, at best, hidden your face from the sight, you would probably have vomited, and maybe even passed out. It was disgusting. And then there were the screams of agony as Jesus put all of his weight on those nails so that he could lift himself up, dragging his beaten back up that wooden, un-sanded piece of wood, just so that he could take a breath.

It’s offensive. The cross is offensive and gruesome and terrible. But pretty crosses make it a little more palatable. Because, really, who’s going to wear an electric chair around their neck, except some raving lunatic?

Look, I don’t have a problem with cross jewelry. I think Christians should wear a cross necklace or a ring with a cross on it if they want to. If they are ready to explain what it means if asked. You wear a cross, you better be ready to tell somebody about it. They compliment it, saying, “That’s a pretty cross!” “Well, thank you, but let me tell you about what it represents.”

But that’s what you’ve got to figure out. What’s the cross to you?

“Temperance is, unfortunately, one of those words that has changed its meaning. It now usualy means teetotalism. But in the days when the second Cardinal virtue was christened ‘Temperance’, it meant nothing of the sort. Temperance referred not specially to drink, but to all pleasures, and it meant not abstaining, but going the right length and no further. It is a mistake to think Christians ought all to be teetotallers; Mohammedanism, not Christianity, is the teetotal religion. Of course it may be the duty of a particular Christian, or of any Christian at a particular time, to abstain from strong drink, either because he is the sort of man who cannot drink at all without drinking too much, or because he wants to give the money to the poor, or because he is with people who are inclined to drunkenness and must not encourage them by drinking himself. But the whole point is that he is abstaining, for a good reason, from something which he does not condemn and which he likes to see other people enjoying. One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting everyone else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons — marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who do use them, he has taken the wrong turning.

One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word Temperance to the question of drink. It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things. A man who makes his golf or his motor bicycle the centre of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as ‘intemperate’ as someone who gets drunk every evening. Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily: bridge-mania or golf-mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road. But God is not deceived by externals.”

Verse 20-21, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.”

So we don’t pursue self-actualization here, we don’t pursue wealth and material accumulation here, because our citizenship is in Heaven.

Look, where you’re from makes a difference in who you are, what you like, and what you want. When we lived in Indiana, they didn’t want LSU to win the national championship last year. They didn’t want the Saints to be successful. Why? They wanted their teams to be successful. They wanted the Indianapolis Colts to win the Super Bowl. They didn’t want boiled crawfish in the spring. They didn’t want a big pot of gumbo when it was cold outside. They wanted other things.

In the same way, if your citizenship is on earth, then you will desire earthly things, earthly pleasures. But if your citizenship is in Heaven, you shouldn’t desire those same things. No, you are looking to Christ. Your mind is set on things above. You can’t wait to rid yourself of this sin-ridden, decaying, soul-shell so that you can put on your glorified body, the body like the one Jesus has now, which will live forever in sinlessness and painlessness and function as a well-oiled, God-glorifying machine, because your heart will finally be free to just worship Him and the idea of worshipping him unceasingly won’t sound boring, and you will rejoice in the fact that when you’ve been there 10,000 years, you’ll have no less than when you first begun!

That’s what we’re looking forward to!

That’s why we are imitating Paul and not those others who are walking as enemies of the cross. It’s like trading in your Lamborghini for a Geo Metro.

We can’t even imagine the unending, immeasurable pleasures of Heaven. And because they are unknown to us, we are so easily tempted to give them up for the known, yet far less superior pleasures of this life.

May we have minds set on Christ this morning, and this week, and this month, and this year, so that we don’t wind up walking as enemies of the cross.

Of course, I want all my man-family guys to read it as a refresher of what we spent our year together building up in each other.

But not just those guys! If you are a Christian dude, you should read this book. You can read it online for free and its pretty short, so you don’t have any excuses, except you like your porn and don’t want to get convicted about it.

Look, even if you don’t typically like Driscoll or The Resurgence (you know who you are), you still need to read this.

If you are a woman, you probably don’t need to read this book, unless you are reading it with your husband AND he has invited you to read it with him AND he is willing to talk about these things openly and honestly AND if something comes out that you weren’t expecting, you can work with him for his purity, not beat him down or disrespect him like he’s some kind of animal. He’s not. He’s a dude, and all of us dudes face this temptation. It’s your job as his wife to help him fight it off. If he’s steeped in it or has been steeped in it, he’s got enough guilt on his own AND IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU!

There ya have it. Men, read it.

Here’s the link: http://relit.org/porn_again_christian/toc.php

I went to Super One in Pineville, LA yesterday (December 13th). I pulled into the parking lot around noon and I was talking with a friend, so I stayed in the car. The parking spot I was in was facing a large, tree-lined field next to the store.

As I was sitting there, I saw a large, jet black cat step out of the trees. It was probably 100 yards away, and seemed to be a little larger than a golden retriever…but this was no dog. It had pointy ears and a long tail.

It just stood there, looking around for a while. Then it walked around the edge of the field. After about 10 or 15 minutes, it disappeared into the woods.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have a camera with me, and I was talking on the phone at the time. So, I have no proof. Oh well. Fortunately, it wasn’t Bigfoot, or something else less believable!

The video below, especially around 29 seconds, shows what I saw. As Ripley would say, “Believe it or not!”

The cross was not an accident.

Jesus wasn’t crying out to God in Gethsemane because things had gone terribly wrong.

They had gone terribly right.

So, this Christmas, instead of focusing on the “Merry Giving,” as the sign in our local mall says, how about we focus on Jesus Christ.

God in the flesh.

Savior of the World.

Who for the joy set before him endured the cross.

So that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.

Making Him the greatest gift you or I shall ever receive.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only son…”

Let’s celebrate Him this Christmas.

God is the recipient of our thanksgiving.

Jesus is the reason for our thanksgiving.

And…

3) The Holy Spirit leads us to good works which result in the thanksgiving of others towards God.

I asked you at the beginning to turn to 2 Corinthians 9.  So you should be there. 

In this chapter, Paul is encouraging the Corinthian church to take up an offering to send to the Christians in Jerusalem, who were facing hard times financially.

Verses 11-12 say, “You will be enriched in every way for all your generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.  For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints, but it is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God.”

So, one of the motivations for giving is the thanksgiving of others to God.

You see, most of the time, when we think of thanksgiving, we only think about our own thanksgiving.  We only think about what we have to be thankful for.  How can I give thanks to God?  At most, we think about how our families can give thanks to God.

How often do we think about the thanksgiving of others to God as being something we should be concerned about?

Never!  I have never considered someone else’s thanksgiving to God as something I should be concerned about.  And so, this passage blew me away when I realized that Paul is saying, “Your generosity is going to result in THEIR thanksgiving to God!”  and that their thanksgiving should be a cause for motivation for me to give!

The last two weeks, two weeks ago in particular, we talked about following the urges of the Holy Spirit – that God urges us through the Holy Spirit to do things for others, to send them money, to encourage them, to call them up and pray with them, or to just pray for them. 

The motivation for acting on those urges is not just obedience to God…it is to produce thanksgiving in their hearts to God…which is what? 

Worship.  Thanksgiving to God is worship to God. 

So we act on the urges of the Holy Spirit to give others reason to worship God in thanksgiving. 

Because, I realized as I was looking at this, one of the highest forms of worship is not just to worship God ourselves, but to rejoice in others rejoicing in God. 

When even worship is not just about me and God, or you and God, but more about others and God, that’s when the humility of Christ has taken root in our lives. 

In other words, our rejoicing in others worshipping God is a sweeter worship to God than just us rejoicing in God for ourselves. 

So, this Thanksgiving, why don’t we make an effort to give someone else a reason to have thanksgiving to God?  How about instead of focusing on us and why we can have thanksgiving to God…how about we make sure others have a reason to give thanks to God from a full heart?  

 Doing so will show that we’ve really gotten what it means to be a Christian.  It will show that we are living lives worthy of the gospel, as we’ve been talking about in Philippians, for when we consider the thanksgiving of others to God as more significant than our own, then we will have gotten Philippians 2:3, “but in humility count others more significant than yourselves.” 

Paul says in Philippians 1:27, “Only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.”  “If there is one thing you do, if there was one thing I could tell you, let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ.”

The best way I know how to work that out practically for us is to give you the question I ask myself when faced with temptation.  You find yourself in that battle. “Should I?  Should I not?”  Right?  The shoulder demon and angel are going back and forth…back and forth…

Just ask yourself a simple question:  Is it worth Jesus dying on the cross for me to do this?

It’s been a tough week and I really just want to get drunk tonight…is that worth Jesus dying on the cross?

I’m really lonely and if I could just escape into this pornography…is that worth Jesus dying on the cross?

I’m really angry at my coworker or my neighbor or a family member and I just want to go give them a peace of my mind…is that worth Jesus dying on the cross?

I just found a wallet with $200 in it and that would help us make ends meet the rest of the month, do I keep it or turn it in?  Is $200 worth Jesus dying on the cross?

If you find yourself at the intersection of righteousness and sinfulness…ask yourself the question, “Is it worth Jesus dying on the cross?”

Because that’s what it cost.  Jesus died on the cross because of our sins.  It was our sin that nailed him there.

So ask yourself the next time you’re at that crossroads, “Is it worth Jesus dying on the cross?”

The answer will never be “yes.”