Don’t Pine away in life’s struggles.

God’s lessons from nature:

There is a type of tree of the pine family that produces seed cones that are very tough and these cones only release their life giving seeds when intense heat, such as forest fires which causes them to open up. A believer also will face the fiery trials of life and as Jesus said, ” Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds. Anyone who loves their life will lose it, while anyone who hates their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.” John 12:24-25

Life is full of storms and difficulties, but we need not despise them but rather embrace the life they can bring forth if we trust God through them.

Child birth is another example of how pain brings new life. The agony lasts only a time but brings forth that which is living and is a great joy, a child, and new life.

Pain can be the ideal catalyst for change and renewal if we respond in a godly way.
James chapter one says “Consider it pure joy when we face trials of various kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and endurance must finish it’s work so that you may be mature and complete not lacking anything.”

When we go through stressful and difficult times, the Lord can use that to make us less reliant on external circumstances for our stability. Now, most people would just want the bad times to disappear all together, but since we live in a fallen broken world it is an even better blessing to have strength and wholeness to overcome life’s hurdles as opposed to total elimination of life’s difficulties, which will not take place until Christ returns and all things are set right.

But in the meantime, we should grow to handle such times with godly strength and the Lord’s power!

https://www.google.com/search?q=forest%20fire%20causes%20the%20cones&safe=active&gws_rd=ssl

Human Spiders.

(Human Spiders and the Webs They Create)

Has any body else picked up on sneaky questions people ask to snare them in something they say? Well you need not look farther then when a public figure who holds and unpopular belief goes on a TV show or is asked questions by a news anchor….it starts out with trivial small talk and pleasantries and then they say, “Oh by the way, what’s your opinion on ___________.” Fill in the blank, so what is really looks like a friendly interchange has guile and deceptive intentions from the get go.

Jesus faced similar opposition and the people at the time tried to drag him down the proverbial slippery political slope of his day. We see human nature has not changed much and people still practice these devious tactics in order to trap those they view as enemies or enemies of their causes.

Mark 12:13-17 Later they sent some of the Pharisees and Herodians to Jesus to catch him in his words. They came to him and said, “Teacher, we know that you are a man of integrity. You aren’t swayed by others, because you pay no attention to who they are; but you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it right to pay the imperial tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or shouldn’t we?” But Jesus knew their hypocrisy. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he asked. “Bring me a denarius and let me look at it.” They brought the coin, and he asked them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”“Caesar’s,” they replied. Then Jesus said to them, “Give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”And they were amazed at him.

Basically these people were doing exactly what Psalm 28:3 speaks of.

Psalm 28:3-4 Do not drag me away with the wicked, with those who do evil, who speak cordially with their neighborsbut harbor malice in their hearts. Repay them for their deedsand for their evil work;repay them for what their hands have doneand bring back on them what they deserve.

These people do not want a wise and intelligible answer most of the time but rather to spin a little spiderweb to trap one in a situation so they look bad. So it really is not a friendly thing but a way to get someone to let their guard down to say something that presents them in a bad light.

Be careful what you say in front of people or how you respond to their questions. Jesus say through their flattery to their hypocrisy and confronted them square on. Then he responded with such a wide answer they were dumb founded.

The Sin Parasite

If you have learned anything about me you will no I love biology, especially when it pertains to parasitic organisms. The thought that some alien life form can hijack our bodies is not just erie but fascinating. Parasitic worms especially have captured my interest from a very young age.

There is a lot of truth in science, and I believe God has given us natural facts to grasp supernatural truths, so men and women might possible reach out and find Him.

Romans 1:20 says “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.” 

I see object lessons all the time in science. I cannot help but draw many comparisons.

Sin is a lot like a virus or as Augustine profoundly said himself was likened to a “parasite”

Augustine said once, ‘There can be no evil where there is no good… Nothing evil exists in itself, but only as an evil aspect of some actual entity… Evils therefore, have their source in the good and unless they are parasitic on something good, they are not anything at all.’ (Augustine, Enchiridi

Parasites give no benefit to the host really, on the contrary, some destroy their hosts.

There are many types of parasitic organisms but they all have this in common. The feed off of a host, they can live either as external parasites like leeches or ticks, but in other cases they can live inside their victims completely undetected robbing the life from the unfortunate soul.

In the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Romans he describes sin in this way. He describe how the Law, or often referred to as the Law of Moses, was not sinful in itself but through the law sin was introduced.

“What shall we say, then? Is the law sinful? Certainly not! Nevertheless, I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was dead. Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good.” Romans 7:7-12 

What does this mean though? God laid out his standard as to how his chosen people out to live, so he gave them more or less a legal code of conduct. However, the problem that occurred was even though the law was “holy, righteous and good” it also created an opportunity to violate those principles. With the introduction of a command come an opportunity to break it.

Lets use an illustration from US law. Suppose there were no laws legislated for a particular matter, lets call it action Y. It would for that reason be not considered criminal in our legal system to do action Y if there is no law forbidding it. However, as soon as a law is passed in regards to action Y it also creates another opportunity for a criminal offense.

Sin has always existed but as Paul also said “For apart from the law, sin was dead.”- This is very much like our friend the parasite. A parasite is bad no matter what but as soon as it finds a host it can thrive. When the host dies, so does the parasite.

The law was sin’s initial host, and I guess you can say we became the secondary host for sin.

It’s very much like a parasite known by the Latin name, Dermatobia Hominus. Dermatobia Hominus is a what we know the “human bot fly.” An adult bot fly will lay an egg on a mosquito when both are traveling through the air and then when the mosquito bites a person, the bot egg falls off and the maggot burrows deep into the flesh of it’s secondary host, a human vector.

When God’s law came it also carried with it a capacity to say “yes” and obey, or “no” by disobeying and doing wrong. So we are the problem at the end of the day. How often do we know what is right and fail to do it? We know we shouldn’t lose our tempers but we feel that powerful inclination rise up and make us fall, time and time again. We are like the child or teen who’s parents tell them not to do this or that but for some reason that only fuels our desire to do it more. Many women say the idea of having something they know the cannot is irresistable. Women are complicated needless to say but that principle is at work in all our hearts, we want that thing we shouldn’t or are told not to.

Paul says, “sin seizing the opportunity afforded by the command deceived me, and produced every covetous desire in me” When a parasite attacks a human body it can create physical cravings due to the fact the body is telling us it needs nutrition, and in the same way sin in the soul produces the unclean craving we all have had. Paul concludes by stating
“So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” Romans 7:21-24 

But thank goodness he does not conclude there but says, ” Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.”- Romans 7:25

In essence, no we can never be totally free of this parasite as long as we have a human body in this world. However, we are not left without the antidote. Biologically, a person can eradicate most of a parasite and live a normal life even though a few rogue renegades remain, but unlike before they are not infested or overrun by the parasite. Likewise, a Christian is not sinless after he or she trusts Christ, however, the reign of terror that sin caused has been nailed to the cross. The dominion has been abolished even if on occasion a Christian sins. “for if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has gone and the new has come” 2 Corinthians 5:17