WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE?

I took my youth ministry seriously. I took my time to teach and challenge my kids seriously and indeed it paid off. For the most part my kids, hundreds of them, were into the Bible. They were believers, young believers, but believers indeed. Upon their conversion, each was given a Bible.

I wanted to protect them somehow from a growing heresy that has caught many of us "Bible believers". So I figured out a good object lesson that would shake them up.

Baptist churches seem to collect old abandoned Bibles and we had our share of old and beat-up Bibles in our library.

I took one of these old Bibles with me to our big Bible study on Wednesday nights. I started talking about the Word of God, the Bible, and mentioned that there were verses I didn't particularly like. Verses that made me uncomfortable. I turned in the bible to a verse I didn't particularly like, read the verse, and then tore the verse out of the Bible, crumpled it up and threw it on the floor. You could hear the kids gasp! I continued on reading hard verses, uncomfortable verses and tore them from the bible and threw them on the floor. The kids were silent! Von, their Pastor, desecrating God's Word! I asked the kids ... what's the difference? If we aren't going to obey certain verses or believe certain verses or do what the Word asks us to do? It's the same thing! Are we allowed to pick and choose what we want from God's Word? The kids picked up on that, they got the point. That lesson won't be forgotten.

Many of us aren't aware that we are doing just that ... and that is heresy.

The Bible must be one of three things! (1) A book of Jewish myths and stories, or (2) a book that contains truth but is not necessarily truth itself, or (3) a book that is truth.

If the Bible is a book that simply contains truth, then I am allowed to pick and choose what I want to believe. A dangerous virus ... a very subtle heresy!

Many Christians don't realize they are doing just that! Think it over.

CHRISTMAS EVE 2013

For more than a half century I've spent Christmas in Mexico. Visiting homes and barrios distributing gifts and generally ending the night at an orphanage. Some Christmas Eve's are wet and some dry, but all are dark and cold in this area of Tijuana.

Near the orphanage we were driving to, we stopped and spent some time with a poor family we knew, living on a hillside. Lorie and her eight kids were working on a big pot of pozole soup. The soup was cooking outside over a hot wooden fire. Pozole is uniquely Mexican (pork, hominy, and jalapeno peppers). In fact most family's throw a lot of extras. A bowl of pozole would be their Christmas Eve meal treat ... no gifts under the tree this year!

When the three of us arrived they quickly pulled out some old chairs and gave us each a desert of store bought cake with a mix of whip-cream and fruit. The pozole wouldn't be ready for an hour or two.

For a few minuets we became part of a poor family doing Christmas Eve the way the poor do.

Of course we left them happy with their unexpected gifts. Mom now had enough money to think a few meals ahead.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

There are many ways to spell Christmas and many more ways to express this awesome occasion. God's love and light entered our world in the form of a humble baby; a baby born to start a revolution! The greatest gift man has ever been given yet this gift remains invisible to the majority of us. We recognize the occasion yet the reason for the occasion still eludes us.

To those of us who have caught the reason, Christmas is simply "Thank you Jesus time."

Children see Christmas so much differently than us adults. Children seem to express the joy and energy we once had, in a child you can see it and you can feel it. Raw joy!

We must never forget that Jesus entered the world poor to redeem the poor. We must not forget that the Gospel came first to the poor of this world!

Because I work in the Tijuana barrios I’m constantly reminded that the Gospel also came to those across the border locked in their darkness not by a fence ... but by ignorance and deception. They just don’t know!

Thanks for helping us bring the Gospel across the border in word and deed! Remember, eternal investments pay off big time! Keep us in your prayers and have a nice Christmas and New Years!