Category: Christianity

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity

Is God King of Your Life?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

6 When Samuel heard their demand—“Give us a king to rule us!”—he was crushed. How awful! Samuel prayed to God.

7-9 God answered Samuel, “Go ahead and do what they’re asking. They are not rejecting you. They’ve rejected me as their King. From the day I brought them out of Egypt until this very day they’ve been behaving like this, leaving me for other gods. And now they’re doing it to you. So let them have their own way. But warn them of what they’re in for. Tell them the way kings operate, just what they’re likely to get from a king.”

1 Samuel 8:6-9 the Message

Am I a citizen of the kingdom of God, bowing to His will as my King? Or am I the king of myself, a victim of the tyranny only a human king can inflict, even if that human operates with the best of intentions?

Even though my prayer every morning is to do God’s will for my life that day, I know that I am incredibly practiced at holding on to things I am meant to hand over to God. One of my coping mechanisms for my generalized anxiety disorder is definitely worrying over all the possible scenarios of a thing as if my “control” will somehow affect the outcome. But that control is truly an illusion. And my mind, which is imagining all the things that can go wrong and what can I do to prevent them, isn’t being helped, but rather it is being put into a state of even more anxiety with this poor pattern.

Still, God has patience with me that I don’t understand but openly receive. How many times in my life has He proven to me that even the worst thing I can imagine happening does not end me? I may experience inconveniences and maybe even incredible pain, but when I look for my King-God, He is always there, ready to comfort me when I am at my lowest.

So many examples come to my mind, but perhaps the least maudlin of them involve my house. First, it took me almost three years to find the right house at the right time in the competitive Houston market. I have lived here for more than 20 years. Everything I ever worried about home ownership before taking the plunge into it, I have experienced and survived in this house of mine. And I mean everything:

Foundation cracked/repair–check
Roof leaks–check
Plumbing leaks–check
Washing machine water all over my floor–check
Termites–check
Carpenter ants–check
HVAC replaced–check
Etc., etc., etc.

In each of these instances, I spent more time worrying about how the problem would get fixed, even when God sent me just the right person to fix it. Picture me sitting in my chair worrying about the work the person who is trained is doing, as if I am the one doing the actual work! Fortunately, I am getting better at reminding myself that fixing the problem rests on the trained person’s shoulders, not my own.

Maybe better, but certainly not flawless.

The stories in Judges show us again and again how tragic life can be when we try to rule ourselves instead of submitting to the will of God. Samuel, the final judge in Israel, saw his share of this erroneous behavior. Despite his strong commitment to doing God’s will (he had spent his entire life in the house of God, dedicated to His service), he failed to raise children with the same commitment. In fact, his sons were so terrible at the prospect of inheriting one of them as a judge in part prompted the people to call for a king.

Even though Samuel goes into great detail to warn Israel about the tyranny of a human king, the people want to have one, convinced that a nation lead by a king just like all the other nations around them is what they require to finally conquer everyone and rule the Promised Land. Like me, they have conveniently forgotten all the times before when God showed up, literally, and saved them from enemies and even from themselves. He saved them from Egypt, fed them in the desert for more than 40 years, gave them Jericho and fertile ground for their crops.

What does Israel trade God’s kingship for? Instead of ending violence, Saul’s kingship puts Israel under the strain of preparing for it. His war engine includes chariots and weaponry that must be created and tended by men. His treasury requires taxes on a nation already oppressed under the tyranny of the Philistines, the latest enslavers God has allowed to conquer Israel because they have forgotten their covenant with Him. Saul subjugates them to reactive, irrational decisions based more on his impulses than any guidance sought from God.

Saul is so terrible as a king, that God quickly decides to choose another. And the man He chooses, a boy really at the time, is the kind of person we could all take a lesson from in terms of trusting God as King.

When he enters the Bible story, David is the runt of his father Jesse’s eight children, from the smallest family in the smallest clan in the smallest tribe, Benjamin. Because God can do all things, even using the lowliest of people, David’s descendants would one day include our Savior Jesus Christ, He who saved all the world from the consequences of our sin.

But before that, before God turned him into the greatest of Israel’s human kings, David served as a shepherd for his father’s sheep, honing his survival skills and his reliance on God’s protection to do his job well. “God delivered me from the teeth of the lion and the claws of the bear,” David declares, giving credit to God for every victory in his life.

Nowhere is David’s reliance on God as his King more apparent than when the lowly shepherd David took on the Philistine super soldier Goliath. Picture this. The armies of Israel and Philistine in all their glory face off on separate hills with a valley in between them. Every day for 40 days, a giant of a man, Goliath, standing over ten feet and decked out in 126 pounds of armor, stomped into the valley with his armor bearer to taunt Israel.

“Send me your champion,” Goliath says. “Let this be a contest between him and me and let the victor become master over the other.”

Every day, Goliath repeated this ritual, and every day, Israel looked on, quaking in their boots. One day, David is among the onlookers, but instead of their fears, he finds himself outraged at Goliath’s complete disregard for God.

“Who does he think he is, anyway,” David asks, “this uncircumcised Philistine taunting the armies of God-Alive?”

Just as God saved David from the hazards of watching sheep, He would also save him from the challenge of fighting the Philistine champion. David tells King Saul, “Don’t give up hope. I’m ready to go and fight.”

Not only did David feel a righteous rage on behalf of God, he so trusted in God to bring him victory that he entered the valley armed only with the tools he’d carried in his other dangerous encounters, a shepherd’s tools, including five smooth stones and a sling.

David answered, “You come at me with sword and spear and battle ax. I come at you in the name of God-of-the-Angel-Armies, the God of Israel’s troops, whom you curse and mock. This very day God is handing you over to me. I’m about to kill you, cut off your head, and serve up your body and the bodies of your Philistine buddies to the crows and coyotes. The whole earth will know that there’s an extraordinary God in Israel. And everyone gathered here will learn that God doesn’t save by means of sword or spear. The battle belongs to God–He’s handing you to us on a platter!”

(1 Samuel 17:46-49 the Message)

If God is truly King of my life, if I live in obedience to His Word and place my destiny in His hands just like David, what victories for His kingdom might I also experience? This is the focus that lays the firmest foundation for Christian living.

Is your God truly your God-Alive? Because He loves us so much, we have the opportunity to start each day anew, to choose to look to God instead of ourselves and to know the joy that is His alone to give.

In Christ,
Ramona

Photo by Allen Beilschmidt sr.:

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity

God, Who Saved His People Out Of Egypt

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

And Saves Us Now, Once And For All

For more than 400 years, Israel lived as slaves under the strict rule of Egyptian masters. Nothing they achieved was for themselves or their families. Tied to the whims of those masters, they didn’t even protest when Pharaoh ordered their babies to be slaughtered!

But God had a plan for Israel, a plan that would solidify His place as the One, True God. That’s why He let Pharaoh harden his heart against Him. Because of Pharaoh’s stubbornness in refusing to let God’s people go, the Lord showed His awesome power. He performed miracles the likes of which had never before been seen. He turned the great Nile red with blood, plagued the Egyptians with hordes of frogs, locusts and gnats, damaged crops and livestock, and finally killed the firstborn of every Egyptian family while Passing Over the families of Israel.

The miracles didn’t stop there. He parted the waters of the Red Sea, provided manna for sustenance as they wandered in the wilderness, 600,000 strong, leading them by a mighty cloud by day and a fire at night, His presence always there with them. For forty years, He provided for and protected them as He led them in the wilderness, and then He helped them conquer the Land of Promise.

Despite how He loved them, despite the power He displayed and the love He showed them, Israel stumbled just like the rest of us. They sinned against God, gave up hope in His promises, and even created a golden idol as God appeared in their presence, speaking with Moses up on the mountain, shrouding the mountain in cloud and fire so awesome that the people dare not go near it.

Still, God loved them and longed to seal His covenant with them forever. God longed to be their king, the only King they would ever need. Reading through the Exodus story, we hear God remind His people over and over again, “I am the God who brought you out of Egypt, My mighty powers displayed.” God uses the time in the wilderness to teach them how to live a Godly life.

Why was such a God-centered life necessary for Israel? God is pure in a way we humans can only try to perceive. As He led Israel to the Promised Land, God appeared to Israel through the veil of clouds and fire because no one could hope to look upon the full Presence of God and expect to live. When Moses spoke to God personally, shrouded in that cloud, he returned to Israel with a glow on his face, created by the mere reflection of the pureness of God, that literally scared them so, Moses had to wear a veil to shield them from his radiant glory.

The need for a veil separating sinners from a Holy God is further reflected in God’s instructions for His Tabernacle, instructions so that His Presence might dwell there as He lived among His chosen people. The Holy of Holies, the most inner sanctum of that tabernacle, is where only the High Priest might enter, as close to God’s Presence as any person was allowed to be. And to go beyond that veil, the High Priest must himself be pure, atoned for and redeemed by the sacrifices and rituals God dictated for just that purpose.

All along, God continued to remind His people, not only of His power as displayed on the exodus from Egypt, but also of the personal relationship He longed to have with them. The phrase, “God, your God,” repeats over and over in Deuteronomy as Moses instructed the people on God’s commands. And as they began to conquer the Amorites and Canaanites and more to finally settle in the Promised Land, God reminded them of His power, how He would go before them and give them strength, just as He had in the past. Not only was He a personal God, He also must be known as “God, the God of Israel.”

More than a thousand years after the exodus from Egypt, God, our God chose to become God, our Savior, once and for all atoning for the sins you make and I make through the sacrifice of Jesus, God Who came to us living in human flesh, living a life without sin, and innocent, dying on a cross, once and for all saving all who choose to believe and to call Him Lord.

Salvation’s first step is accepting that the best control of your life belongs to God’s Higher Power. Submitting to His will, a problem for Israel even after all they had seen, assures that we are seeds planted in that deeper soil, flourishing for the sake of our Savior and His Kingdom. And in that place where God alone is King, we may kneel before His throne because Jesus’ sacrifice tore the curtain that once was needed to separate us. Jesus’ blood makes us pure before God.

Of the many lessons I learn from the Exodus story, I am most struck by the privilege it is to bow my head in prayer before the One, True God. And I am most aware that I am just as susceptible to mistakes and sin as Israel. How vigilant we must be to spend time in prayer with God, my God, God, your God. Like Israel we should know the Word of God, write it on our hearts, sear it into our souls, and act upon it with regularity and conviction. Like Israel, we must be aware of our susceptibility to fail in that mission.

Christians still need to repent of sins. We still need to acknowledge the will of God in our lives. We need to remember that we have been allowed into that Holy Place where God alone belongs. We fallible humans need the intervention Jesus gives. Because we must understand that need and not get too full of ourselves, I think the stories in the Bible show the good and the bad to warn us how easily we can fall short of God’s glory, too.

How fortunate we are that God’s love means Jesus’ sacrifice has absolved us once and for all! Walking with God in that personal relationship established from Genesis to Revelation, we can be strong and courageous in our real struggles with the challenges of this world, knowing we are no longer slaves to our sinfulness, but freed by the grace of God, the One and Only.

In Christ,
Ramona

Photo by Axel Sandoval

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity

I Want You To Know Jesus

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

If all of my effort to write means anything, my prayer is that I help people learn more about Jesus, growing in faith and maybe seeing ways to improve their relationship with God they had not thought about before.

Jesus loves us more than anyone. I know this truth because I believe He lived as a human, the only human who never sinned, and took on the punishment for my sin when He allowed Himself to be placed on a cross. I know that I will live eternally with Him because I believe He rose from death to be a living God forever.

We cannot rely on just ourselves to define what is good and bad and expect to find peace in this life. The Bible tells us what it means to know God and gives us the roadmap to living a life that pleases God. Jesus describes living according to the Law of God as staying on the narrow path and walking in the light. When we believe in and love Him, trying every day to live right is actually a lighter burden because Jesus is with us, helping us do what is right through the Holy Spirit, His gift to those who believe.

Knowing Jesus is a life-long quest. The more we learn about Him, the more we can lean on Him in times of trouble and to help us make wise decisions each day. Knowing Jesus helped me survive having to watch my mother die from ALS, one of the worst diseases on the planet. Because of Jesus, I strive to be productive even though I struggle with several illnesses that make working and sometimes even moving difficult.

Two of the saddest stories in the Bible to me involve people who turned away from Jesus. When Jesus drove the demons out of the Gentile and into the herd of pigs at Gerasene, the Gentile followed Jesus’ orders and went home to tell about the great things that Jesus was doing. Unfortunately, the people of Gerasene let fear win out over faith. They asked Jesus to leave, which meant He didn’t do any more miracles there or touch any more lives.

The second time Jesus gets rejected is in his own hometown. Even though He went into the synagogue and taught them things that astonished them, the people couldn’t get over the fact that Jesus had grown up among them. “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” they asked each other. Because of their unbelief, Jesus left Nazareth without performing the amazing miracles or continuing to preach as He had done in so many other areas of Israel.

In contrast to the people who turned away from Jesus, we have the story of the woman whose belief in Jesus was so great, she experienced healing just by touching Jesus’ cloak. Others followed suit, allowing their faith to open the way up for blessings.

Being a Christian means putting Jesus first. Ironically, because Jesus loves us and wants what is best for us, putting Him first inevitably helps us bring about the best life we could hope for. Praying helps us connect to Jesus, who is the reason we can come before Almighty God and ask for the best of things, as well as seeking forgiveness of sins and guidance for our walk in the light. The more we talk with God, the closer we will draw to Him.

I pray for this country because our media at least has taken an increasingly active role to deny Jesus, just like the people of Gerasene and Nazareth. No love can surpass the love of Jesus, He who stepped down from His divinity to face the wrath of that divinity toward a human race that lived in brokenness. Jesus’ love for us is pure and infinite. Any other kind of love has limits and imperfections. Any one who thinks he or she can live without Jesus’ love lies to himself or herself. And even though Jesus hurts for those who refuse to believe in Him, those who suffer most for unbelief are the non-believers themselves.

Start or re-start your walk with Jesus. Admit that you are a sinner in need of forgiveness. Ask Jesus to forgive you and to become your Savior. Make a commitment to change your behavior as you grow with Jesus. Open your heart to the gift of the Holy Spirit by practicing good Christian steps of daily prayer and Bible study. Know the God of the Bible and not just the God of your heart.

Let’s bring Jesus into this troubled world by shining His light. Now more than ever, we need to remember that He has the infinite view, always ready to guide us in love.

In Christ,
Ramona

Photo by nappy from Pexels

Posted in Christianity

What If We Loved Like This?

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Jesus loves us according to what we need, not what we deserve. If He loved us according to what we deserve, we’d all have nothing, waiting in terror for the judgment we’ll have when we face Him in all His glory.

Did you notice I say ALL of us would suffer? Not one of us is perfect. Each one of us has committed a sin, and sin separates us from God. Realizing this makes many of the arguments people have about lifestyle choices and actions superfluous. We all stand in front of the prospect of God’s consuming wrath except for the saving grace of believing in and accepting Christ as our Savior and LORD.

When Jesus offered the love that people need, He found all kinds of sinners willing to embrace His ways of doing. The woman living in sin presumably went home to leave the man she currently lived with. Taxpayers and prostitutes welcomed Him to dinner.  One wayward woman poured expensive perfume on his hair because she realized the breadth and depth of His salvation gift.

He also found sinners not ready to accept the love they needed. The young man Jesus encouraged to sell his worldly goods to follow Him walked away from the greatest treasure of all. The money changers at the Temple ignored Jesus’ promise to fill their needs so that Jesus was compelled to tear apart their selling booths. Peter denied Him three times. Judas rejected Him and the promise of salvation by betraying Jesus to the cross.

Too often, we approach others offering what we think they deserve instead of approaching them with what they need in mind. Unfortunately, we don’t even realize we’re doing it. Our attempts at love are tainted by a deserve approach instead of a need approach because looking at people through a lens that only sees them in light of what we think should happen to them based on their actions is really our natural approach to most interactions.

No wonder movements that want to help people turn from actions that may ultimately hurt them too often dwindle into finger-pointing and yelling. No one stops to listen to the other side. No one is thinking about what the other side actually needs. No wonder too many people say that religion fails them.

When we think about people in terms of what they deserve, we put value judgments on everything they do. We let what we think about their actions taint what we convince ourselves they need from us. But what they really need is for us to think about the situation from their point of view. When we are in a quandary about sin, we don’t want someone to judge us. We need someone to try to see things from our point of view, as if they are literally walking in our shoes.

When we look at people through eyes that want to see a need as opposed to what someone deserves, we open our arms instead of holding up rules to block the distance between the two of us. We talk about the joys of knowing God, about the positive things we’ve learned from our study of the Bible. We quote verses about God’s love and patience, not about His judgment as if we are supposed to mete it out.

Perhaps the biggest challenge of trying to choose need over deserve is putting to the side your conviction that you are right and the other person is flaunting God’s law. But only God is the true judge. There are many steps between the words a fellow sinner needs to hear and the ultimate truth we all will face on the final day of judgment. Too often, we confront others from a deserve perspective, forgetting that they need something entirely different from us.

If we want to love like Jesus, we must approach others thinking about what they really need from us, which means considering what we would need from them if our roles were reversed. This approach doesn’t include lying to others just to make them feel more comfortable, though keeping our lips sealed might sometimes be best. We must always speak God’s truth when asked, but we must also always trust God to impart His truth when someone truly accepts Jesus as Savior.

Next time you catch yourself treating someone like you think they deserve instead of like they need, take a breath, apologize, and change your tactics. One-on-one and one by one, we will make a Jesus difference in this world.

We need it even though we don’t deserve it.

In Christ,
Ramona

 

Posted in Christianity

Verses I’m Glad I’ve Read: The “Price” of Worship

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Practice thankfulness on the easy days, and you’ll be ready to be thankful even on your darkest days.

. . . For today, the LORD will appear to you. I will be treated as holy by those who approach Me. (Leviticus 9:4, 10:3)

In my copy of the amplified Bible, whenever I see the word lord spelled out in all-caps, I try to take a moment to remind myself that the Hebrew word being translated means LORD in ways my finite mind may never fully imagine. Translators explain it best as equating to the phrase GOD ALMIGHTY. The word, capitalized so that it stands out from the other text surrounding it, reminds us that GOD is awesome, perfect, omnipotent, more than.

Too often, I think we take for granted the ease with which we access our LORD. Because Jesus gave the ultimate sacrifice, becoming our High Priest and opening the way into the Holy of Holies for all who believe in Him, we only need call out to the LORD and know that GOD ALMIGHTY is with us.

But this easy access wasn’t always the case. Reading through Leviticus this week, with its detailed instructions on how to make sacrifices to God, my poet’s mind filled with images of slaughter and blood. Animals without blemish cut into pieces, the choicest cuts rising in smoke to heaven, the tendrils of all that killing and slicing became a pleasing aroma to God because it all signified the desire of His people to do whatever it took to come into fellowship with Him.

I have never slaughtered an animal. I have enough trouble sometimes handling the comparatively pristine meat in its cellophane package, the liquid red juices sending a pungent odor to my nostrils. So, I can only imagine how messy Aaron’s job of slaughtering animals for sacrifice must have been. I can almost picture him after a long day in the tabernacle, his fine tunic, his skin, his hair, all splattered in blood, everything on him and around him heavily scented with the smell of burning wood and flesh.

How ironic it seems that cleansing people from sin should require such messy business. After a long day at the tabernacle, Aaron’s knuckles, the cuticles around his nails, the space between his nail and his flesh, the curves of his earlobes, the creases around his eyes, every surface on his exposed body would be caked in blood. I can imagine his skin rubbed raw from the scrubbing it would take to clean up after cleansing all day.

When I seek God, how grateful I am that I don’t require a hose down after! Still, because my worship, my ability to come into the presence of GOD ALMIGHTY, does not require a human go-between or the perpetual shedding of blood, I can too easily take advantage of this easy access. I can approach God without the reverence the moment deserves. Also, I too often don’t  take advantage of my ease of access to the LORD, failing to thank Him as often as I should or forgetting to call out to Him for help, instead trying to solve my problems all by myself.

But more important than letting my imagination fill with the filthiness of a process that represented cleansing to the Jewish people is remembering that what God wanted most from the Hebrews was the first of their goods as well as their best. The value He placed on His requirements for sacrifice emphasized the value God places on worship and fellowship with Him.

I heard a preacher many years ago state this obvious, but often overlooked lesson this way: If God wanted so much from those who would worship Him before He sent His only Son to die for all sins once and for all, how much more do we think He might want now that that ultimate sacrifice has been made?

God wants to be first in my life. He wants me to give Him the first of my energy, not what’s left over after a long day of work and driving and taking care of family. He longs for me to come to Him with the best version of myself, with my full attention and wholeheartedness.

Thankfully, God takes whatever of me I give. When I fail to offer my best, God still listens. The person I harm when I don’t give God my first and best is myself because God stands ready to provide the fullness of fellowship with Him at all times and in all ways as long as I do my part.

The next time you go to God in worship and prayer, take a moment to remember how Christ’s sacrifice simplified your access to the LORD. Your thankfulness will only enrich your experience and please God.

In Christ,
Ramona

Posted in Christianity

I’m Missing My Jack-O-Lantern

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Jesus wants to fill me up. The entry from my reading in Jesus Calling a few days ago reminded me that sometimes, in order to make room for Himself inside the worries and cares that crowd into this human vessel known as me, Jesus has to carve out the room He needs to fill me up with His Spirit.

Like a pumpkin full of stringy guts and hundreds of seeds, the inside of me can easily fill with ideas and concerns that take me away from God instead of drawing me closer to Him. When I worry about the treasures of this earth instead of the valuables from a heavenly perspective, I take myself farther away from God.

Often, nothing clears up the proper priority of things better than crisis. In crisis, we realize how little in importance are worries such as having new carpets for the relatives visiting this holiday season or how the prices on everything keep rising so that we can afford fewer luxuries.

Think back on your absolute worst times. Did you not turn to God then, asking Him for help and peace? These troubling times have a way of narrowing our focus back on God and the importance of a heavenly perspective. Like a Jack-O-Lantern artist preparing a pumpkin for display, sometimes Jesus has to scrape out the mush that gets in the way of putting Him first to make room for His Spirit inside our murky souls.

Why is space for Jesus to fill us so important? Maybe it is to make room for the light, the love of Christ that Jesus tells us should not be hidden but rather displayed for all to see. Like the candle burning brightly through the smiling face of a Jack-O-Lantern on a dark October night, we Christians can shine the light of God’s love every day.

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13)

Through the challenges of this holiday season, let Jesus make room to fill you up with His joy and peace so that His light in you shines bright no matter how dark the shadows around you.

 

In Christ,
Ramona

Posted in Christianity

Why God Is Essential To Morality

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Ecclesiastes 12:13b

We probably all think that we are truly living in an age of moral decline on a magnificent scale. Maybe we’re right. But, there are other generations who thought the same. The greatest generation fought a world war to stop a madman in his quest to wipe out an entire race. Sooner back than we would like to remember, a man could be hung in this country for the color of his skin. In some areas of the Old West, everyone carried a gun because everyone used one—and justice often came hand-in-hand with a bullet.

We humans are basically rotten. Anyone who tries to tell you that we are ultimately good in and of ourselves is lying to you. Do you wonder why God includes stories in the Old Testament of a father willing to have his daughter raped to protect his male guests from the gang of townsmen standing outside his door as Lot did, of brother killing brother as Cain killed Abel, of brother raping sister as David’s son Amnon did to his half-sister Tamar?

In a time when God made His miracles known, sent angels to interfere in human affairs, and came to the prophets in dreams to communicate with them directly, people didn’t question the existence of a Holy Creator, merely the reality of His Monotheism. Even though God appeared in a burning bush and made His presence visibly apparent on top of a mountain, the Jewish people, who had been rescued from Egypt by this same God, who had been fed and guided by this God through the desert, continued to sin against Him.

Today, we live in a world that has decided God does not exist. Popular culture makes Him the butt of jokes. Those who profess belief in Him get called crazy on national television. We have pushed Him out of our classrooms, out of our social settings, and out of our morality.

So, why are we surprised when bad things happen in this world left without a God when we humans managed to be bad even when God’s presence was awesomely visible and practically irrefutable?

Believing in God is important in part because the only way a human being can hope to be good is by looking up toward an omnipotent, loving Creator who inspires us to a better self. Christ, who came to earth as man and lived a perfect life, a life without sin or flaw, shows us how love trumps hate, how kindness offers more than meanness, how spiritual things bring more value to this life than anything material.

Man in and of himself is incapable of achieving these heights of goodness. We will not share because people should be good. We will not think of higher things if all we have is this world without a next one. I think this fact is one of the reasons socialism has never succeeded. It’s a nice idea to think that people would willingly provide for others who do not or cannot work as hard as they do, but the reality is much different, especially when the leaders of these movements are often the worst offenders.

But Jesus is not one to do what human leaders do. He does not demand any part of me that He does not deserve. In fact, He could demand much, much more. He loves me even though I make mistakes. He gave His life for my salvation even knowing all the times I was going to disappoint Him in this journey to heaven we call life.

Morality based on the limits of the human imagination, which sees as its ultimate culmination only humanity itself, is a failed morality. But walking in goodness because we respect our God/Creator and also love Him has every reason to succeed. He made us with a desire to seek Him, a desire which helps us reach higher than ourselves, to achieve what we could never achieve if we were left to our own devices, a goodness that honors a pure and holy God.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity

GOD is NOT a Capitalist

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Give God your best

It’s that time of year again at our church, the time when the church leaders are trying to finalize the current budget and get the congregation’s commitments for the tithe.

The tithe, that ten percent of my net worth that should be given to God, usually makes me think in terms of dollar signs. But the church, and most especially God, is not primarily concerned with me opening my wallet. Yes, in our modern world, there are the practical concerns for a church like having electricity and paying support staff, but the idea of the tithe has never been, or ever was, just about money–in so many ways.

Abraham gave a tenth of all he had to pay homage to the Lord. God told the Israelites, “You shall bring the choice first fruits of your soil into the house of the LORD your God” (Ex. 23:19). The Levitical law declared: “A tithe of everything from the land, whether grain from the soil or fruit from the trees, belongs to the Lord; it is holy to the Lord” (Lev. 27:30). The Proverbs remind us to “honor the LORD with your wealth, with the firstfruits of all your crops” (3:9).

As important as it is to offer to God the first fruits of our labors, which in our economy equates to dollars and cents, the tithe should be a time to also remind ourselves how important it is to God that we honor Him with, not a specific percentage of our worldly goods, but with the best of us, the best of all that we are. 

How often do I give God not the best of me, not the part of me that rolls out of my warm bed mostly ready to face, and maybe even conquer, the world each morning, but rather the what’s left of me, the worn, half-asleep me that has faced the world and found myself wanting? How often do I come to Him only after I have exhausted all my personal resources, as if I have control over anything at all?

Why should it surprise me that God wants the very best of me when He gave me the very best of Himself? Not only did Christ come to earth as man in order to die for my sins, He left behind the Holy Spirit to function inside of me as a believer in the One and Only. Shouldn’t God expect me to begin and end not only my day, but my each breath, with thoughts of praise, with thankfulness for His power in my life, a power I am supposed to be acknowledging instead of trying to take on the world all by myself?

Giving God the first parts of me, the best parts of me, means praying often, especially when I least feel like it, humbling myself to admit that my problems are truly God’s problems, that I cannot worry myself out of any situation but that God can see me through all the things bound to happen to me in a fallen world.

When I was very young and admittedly not too bright, I took my favorite teddy bear, the one smooshed from being held by me through many a long night, and laid him on a makeshift slab bench in our back yard. My uncle, a young man, was dying from cancer not even a year after my grandfather had died. In the shade of our fruitless mulberry tree, I prayed that God would take my teddy bear and make my uncle better.

Since I didn’t have access to matches, I guess I expected my teddy bear to be struck by lightening or simply disappear. In my childish mind, giving up one of my favorite things seemed like a decent trade. But nothing happened, and a few months later, my uncle died anyway.

I didn’t understand then that Jesus had already made the ultimate sacrifice for the only thing that truly mattered, my eternal soul, my uncle’s eternal soul. As A. E. Houseman proclaims, “life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose.” It’s taken me almost four decades to truly understand how important it is that I offer myself to God, not objects, but my whole self no longer tied to the objects on this earth, in order to be close to Him, in order to walk a more Christ-like walk.

Sometimes, I think it’s easier to give God money than concentrate on the things He really wants, like our lives free from sin, our humbleness, our gratitude.  But giving to God means being our best selves in light of our need for our Holy Father. I thank Him for His patience with us. I love Him because He forgives me when I often stumble. And I give Him money from my wallet because my firstfruits include all of me, even the dollars in my bank account.

Posted in Christian Living, Christianity

Here, Ignorance Is Not Bliss

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Know the Word of God and Heed It

Why are we surprised when armchair theology leads us to believe that all decent people somehow wind up in a good place when they die? We’ve raised several generations now of children who have been taught that to participate, even if that participation means wearing the jersey and watching the birds fly overhead in the outfield all season, means being awarded. In an effort to make all children feel good about themselves, we’ve managed to decimate all standards, leaving open to a loosey-goosey interpretation the ideal of perfection.

When did it become wrong to declare that something is slipshod, especially when it comes to human behavior? Do we really think that God would suddenly change His mind about thousands of years of teaching on morality and virtue, He who valued His standards of virtue so much that He was willing to die on a cross, laid bare and humiliated, in order to provide a means for imperfect humans to be in relationship with perfection?

Getting trophies all the time just because you breathe air must make it difficult to realize there are places and times when you actually have to work on being your best self in order to thrive. When the authority figures in your life have always lauded you, no matter how little effort you put into something, it must be even more difficult to visualize a Creator God who might actually see boundaries and strict guidelines as for your greater good, rather than just being angry and mean.

In a world that is grossly unfair, how hard it must be to enter adult life after being buffered against the pitfalls of reality with false accolades to realize that you actually don’t always get what you want, to learn the hard lessons of knowing the difference between needing and wanting. Because you have rarely been called to account for your actions, or lack thereof, you most likely fail to see that the problem resides in your own attitudes. You either turn from God because He seems like a cruel taskmaster that doesn’t line up with your reality of authority figures who are always willing to say good job even when you know something was not your best effort, or you re-create God into an image of yourself, a guy who, if he does exist, surely understands your struggles and cuts you the slack you crave.

But, because God is very real and so very much more than any of us can imagine, we are wise to heed His definitions of what is right and good, to follow His road map to an afterlife spent in His presence instead of wallowing in the misery of hell. In Luke 16, Christ tells the story of a rich man and a poor man named Lazarus which illustrates the importance of heeding God’s Word rather than making up your own, feel-good theology.

The poor man, Lazarus, hovels just outside the gate of the rich man, living a life of half-starved misery, so miserable, in fact, that his only medical attention comes from the dogs who lick at his oozing sores. The rich man, enjoying his great wealth, his friends, his lavish lifestyle, does nothing to comfort the poor man just outside his gates. When they die, Lazarus is brought into the bosom of his ancestor Abraham to enjoy all the peace and luxury he was denied during his earthly life. The rich man, on the other hand, wallows in misery in hell, looking up to heaven to see Lazarus, whom he recognizes, living the life the rich man now longs for.

When the rich man complains, he’s reminded of the luxuries he experienced in his earthly life, but more importantly, he is reminded of the words of Moses and the prophets that the rich man never heeded. When the rich man begs to have a ghost return to the living to warn his brothers against their fate if they do not change their ways, God assures the rich man that the words of Moses and the prophets should be enough for his brothers, just as it should have sufficed for the rich man.

 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them,” Jesus tells us, “and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me” (John 6:44-45). God speaks to us through His Word, which, contrary to popular belief, does not teach that all good people go to heaven. “Therefore, get rid of all moral filth and the evil that is so prevalent and humbly accept the word planted in you, which can save you,” James admonishes (1:21).  That Word teaches that we all sin and fall short of God’s glory, but that the blood of Christ can redeem us.

Christianity is not a license to do bad things. It is the freedom to know that when we stumble, God is ready, willing and able to forgive us instead of condemning us. But Christian freedom does not include living as if sin doesn’t matter. Get rid of moral filth and evil, the Word says. Be humble.

These lessons are so in contrast to our trophy-loving world. I pray that Christians young and old embrace the Word of God, applying its lessons of love and peace, fellowship and humility, so that none of us, like the rich man, enjoy the pleasures of this life without looking toward the treasures we should be storing in the heavens.

God is good, and in His goodness and greatness He alone understands why we must have boundaries to our behaviors, why being a pretty decent fellow isn’t enough to escape the eternal damnation of a non-existent relationship with our loving Creator. Only by accepting Christ as your Savior, by taking on His much lighter yoke of a life lived no longer as a slave to the sinful nature, will any of us hope to see Abraham on the other side of those pearly gates.

I want to be Lazarus, even if it means great suffering in this life. I want to know that when I finally face God, I have the hope of hearing those words which are the greatest trophy of all, WELL DONE.

In Christ,
Ramona

Posted in Christianity, Faith

Resolve to be . . . Industrious

Posted on by Ramona Levacy Billingslea

Resolve to serve God this year

A powerful executive, in charge of billions in assets, notices a disturbing trend as he audits his managers’ recent business performances. He pauses over a particularly disturbing case that brings him pause. This manager, so full of promise when he began right out of college with his MBA and magma cum laude degree, has been spending more time using the corporate country club membership and expense account than in creating new business to help the corporation grow. Further inspection reveals that the manager is also guilty of not even following through on making sure his customers are up-to-date in the accounts receivable department. Books that should be well in the black are in the red.

Steeling himself for an unpleasant confrontation, the top executive calls his business manager into the office one Monday morning to ask him the tough questions. Because the business manager has obviously been sleeping on the job, the executive informs him that his days with the company are most definitely numbered. Desperate to save himself from a bleak employment outlook, the business manager does some fast thinking. If he can grease the right palms, make the right customers happy, just maybe he’ll find a new job even without a recommendation from his current employer. Calling in some of his most deeply-in-debt clients, the business manager cuts some strategic deals. He has his clients write checks for fractions of what they actually owe, forgiving the remainder of their debts on the spot.

By the end of the week, the executive chuckles over the report that lands on his desk. Seems his business manager has more savvy than he’d previously given the man credit for. Rather than firing the business manager, the executive calls him into the office and reminds him that ingenuity and a make-it-happen attitude lie at the heart of good business. The wayward business manager becomes the role model for industry.

What does such a story have to do with Christianity? Why would a parable about cheating your way out of a tight spot fall from the lips of a perfect, truth-telling Savior?

When I have read the parable of the dishonest steward in Luke 16, I have to admit to scratching my head. But as with many of Jesus’ lessons, things are not always as they appear on the surface. What Jesus is really saying when he tells the story of a fast-thinking steward who gets praised for doing what is essentially wrong has nothing to do with the treasures that concern the steward in the first place, those uncertain, earthly riches that none of us will take with us on our ultimate journey to heaven.

Instead, Jesus is wanting us to think, in part, about the effort, creativity and outside-the-box thinking people do who are primarily concerned with storing up treasures on this earth and to consider how much more we could do if we applied the same kind of effort to the gathering of treasure which really matters—the kind that gets stored up for us in heaven.

Imagine how much of a difference your experience of Christ and your ability to share His kingdom you would make if you put similar industry into building treasures in heaven as do those who, like the steward of the parable, strive to build up stores of human wealth. If we concentrate on earthly riches, Jesus tells us, we cannot serve Him. How often, however, do we fail to concentrate on the true goal of our journey toward heaven as we are trying to survive the day-to-day scrabble in this earthly existence?

This parable does not call for us to lie, cheat and steal. These are actions driven by a desire that is fueled by the evil things, by the desire for possessions that only mean something if your main goal in life is to be better than or rule over others. Being industrious for heavenly treasure requires an entirely different mindset. It means we work within the mores of the law of love. It means we choose right instead of wrong. But just because our industry requires us to stay inside the lines, it does not preclude applying our whole selves toward the success of our journey. We can think outside the box and still follow the commandments. We can sweat our way toward a positive outcome and still be in relationship with a loving God.

Some might rightfully argue that if we are not sweating in our efforts to forward the goals of heavenly treasure, then we are not in a relationship with Jesus in the first place. We either choose to serve God in this life or we choose to serve the man-made things that at times are no better than the idols of the Old Testament.  “You cannot serve God and mammon,” Jesus says in this parable.

As we define resolutions for a new year, let us do so with a kind of gusto as if our very livelihood depends upon the outcome, for the outcome of our souls certainly is tied to the choices we make in a world dominated by earthly things. What if we, like the dishonest steward, have been unfaithful with the spiritual treasures Jesus so freely gives to those who believe? How can we improve our pursuits of heavenly treasures in 2018? How can we gather souls for Christ to make up for the deficit of our previous apathy?

In 2018, no matter what your resolutions may be, consider the lessons from the dishonest steward. Your choices make clear whether you are standing on the side of the angels and eternal treasures or if you are clinging to the earthly things that ground you in the desires of a mankind that denies the deity of our powerful God. Resolve to make choices for God this year. Serve Him boldly, creatively, and courageously. We do not earn our salvation, but we most certainly prove to God the degree of our thankfulness depending upon the ways we pursue His vision for Christianity as it should be lived in a fallen world.

 

In Christ,
Ramona