About six weeks ago I was watching little Jude. Janelle asked me to try giving him some sweet potatoes. (Jude’s doctor had suggested starting him on some food.) I had some sweet potatoes from the garden, so I cooked them and pureed them until they were satiny smooth. I put a tiny spoonful in Jude’s mouth. He made a face that can best be described as fearful. He worked his mouth around as if he didn’t know what to do with that stuff. When he actually started gagging, I knew for sure he wasn’t ready. I cleaned up his face and got his bottle. You know what I didn’t do? I didn’t say, “Hey, I went to the trouble to make this for you. And this is good quality. It’s organic! What’s the matter with you?” How ridiculous that would be! I wasn’t the least bit disappointed in him. I didn’t take it personally. He’s a baby and it was just too soon. Just this week Janelle sent us a video of Jude eagerly eating some banana baby food. His eyes were lit up and he was reaching for the spoon with his hands and making all kinds of happy noises. Now he’s ready!

The Lord’s church is made up of Christians in various degrees of maturity. Some are new babes in Christ. Some grew up in the church and heard the gospel all their life. Some were completely “unchurched” and are starting from scratch. Some have baggage. Some may have good understanding in one area but still struggle to understand another. Some may be eager for knowledge but still don’t grasp that it should result in transformation. We’re all in various stages. We’re all still growing. The beauty of the Lord’s church is that we understand that about each other and we’re patient with each other.

For example, if we hear someone use a verse out of context, we recognize that they still have more to learn. When a brother or sister’s words or actions show spiritual immaturity, we don’t think less of them. And in those teaching moments, when someone doesn’t seem to get it, we know they’re just not ready yet. We try not to judge or feel superior. We know we have our own areas that need work!

We’re all trying to learn the worthy walk and trying to grow in the knowledge of God (Col. 1:10). We’re all doing our best to grow beyond the milk of the Word (Heb. 5:12). And since we’re family, we’re doing it together, “with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love” (Eph. 4:2).

By Kathy Pollard

I know you look around and see so many good things to do. I’ve already been invited to more than one event on the ninth of March. But let me tell you…I doubt you will find a more beneficial one if you have daughters between 10 and 20, than this one at Fairview  in Pulaski, Tennessee. In fact, even if you have boys, it would be a great thing for you to experience, so that you can better show them the characteristics they should be searching for in the ladies they spend time with and, one day, marry.

Oh, I know. I’ve heard it just like you have. “Purity days are not how we should teach our girls about waiting for marriage to have sex. In fact, when we keep emphasizing purity, we diminish from the healthy joy of sex, once our girls marry.”

That’s a theory that is simply untrue. Oh, we must constantly tell them that God has saved the best for his children. We, as mamas, must teach them about their sexuality and about how God has reserved that wonderful act, where one man and one woman share the most intimate act known to humanity, for marriage. We must make sure they know about and look forward to the physical union  that God made for much more than just procreation. These conversations come naturally to mothers who are growing pure hearts in little girls. But to say that a big group of girls learning together about cultivating a heart of holiness in a world of eye-candy and  expected sex in dating relationships, is a waste of time–well, that is absurdity.

If your kids are in school, they are hearing the devil’s message about sexuality at every turn. If they are on social media, at all, they are feeling the pull. If they watch any amount of indiscriminate videos online or television (cable or screened), they are getting the sexuality bullet-points from the devil. I’m just saying any immunization from the message that is being shouted all around them about relativism and sexuality, is worth your time and attention. It’s worth your drive.

I’m not sure exactly what topics will be covered on that day. But I know the ladies who are planning this. I know their deep love for their daughters. I know the spiritual-minded nature of their  Bible-focused hearts. I know it will be where I’d want to be, if I could, with my teen-aged daughter. Here you go…

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064531279575&mibextid=LQQJ4d

When we moved to Indiana many years ago, I thought my dear husband had taken me to another country. Not only did I talk like a southerner (and they reminded me often), but I cooked like a southerner. They didn’t know what a casserole was. They didn’t eat turnip greens. In fact, when one of our members took me out to see his turnip patch, I mentioned how many greens he had. He didn’t know you could eat the greens!

I had no idea what they meant when they asked if I wanted a pop. They didn’t eat pinto beans, only white beans. They didn’t eat chicken stew like they do in Alabama; they ate chicken and noodles. Our ladies were not used to preparing food for families when there was sickness or death. If someone wanted to take food they did, but they didn’t know how to organize a meal after a funeral or take food to the home of the deceased.

I am a born southerner, and nothing is going to change me. I finally told them that I was born a southerner, and I would die a southerner. They just needed to understand that and stop making fun of me. They never did.

A lot of the way we are is because of where we were born or what our families believe. Our political views, our general opinions about many things, and our religious beliefs come from our families. So, do you think of yourself as a Christian because you were born into a religious family; or are you a Christian because you have been converted to the gospel?

I was raised in a home where we went to worship on Sunday mornings. We didn’t have a car, so we walked. Eventually, a couple came to pick us up, but I don’t remember going three times a week until I was in the fourth or fifth grade. We moved; we had a car; and we started attending regularly. In the new congregation we attended was a kind and loving elder’s wife who took a personal interest in me. She taught me how to teach Bible classes, and supervised the first class I taught. When I became a Christian, it was not because I was born into a strong Christian family. It was because I wanted to be obedient to the truth.

Paul, the apostle, is a great example of one who lived life according to his upbringing. He was a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. He was born into a family that lived the life of strict conviction, and he truly believed he was doing the right thing in persecuting the Christians. As a young adult, he faced the Lord of heaven and earth on a road that was taking him to more death and destruction for the Jewish Christians.

Paul was born into a religious family; and though his convictions carried him into adult life, he had to face the reality that what he had was not enough. In fact, it was wrong.

When Paul heard the gospel from Ananias, he immediately arose and was baptized. His life changed forever; and eventually he gave his life for the God he served.

There are many today that have Paul’s background. They were born into a religious family. They may have gone to “church” most of their lives. They may have been baptized. The big question is, “Were they converted?”

I am watching a generation of young people go through my Bible class that know very little about the Bible. They can tell me that they know they have to be baptized, but they cannot tell me why. They can tell me what we do in worship, but they cannot explain why we do it. Few carry a Bible, and likely they don’t use it from one Sunday to the next.

There is such biblical evidence of strong convicted converts in the New Testament. Stephen was so convicted in his beliefs that he preached a sermon that cost him his life. Those on Pentecost interrupted Peter’s sermon to ask what they needed to do to be saved. John the Baptizer preached repentance, and he preached against adultery. He was beheaded. Cornelius, the first Gentile convert, went to a lot of trouble to get to Peter to help him find the truth. Even a sorcerer was changed by the gospel.

There are others, but these are sufficient proof for the power of the gospel. Cornelius was religious, but it wasn’t enough. He was missing that true conversion, that change of heart and obedience of being buried with Christ in a watery grave and raised to walk a new life. Religious, but not saved!

When Paul was instructing Timothy, he gave this young man some sound advice. He said, “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth” (Second Timothy 2:15). When we are obedient to the gospel and do our best to live our lives for the Lord, we will be Christians because we have been converted to the truth, not because we were born into a religious family.

Sandra Oliver

Luke 6:32 “But if you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.”

It is a normal part of homeownership; something breaks, something stops performing, and something wears out. At that point, we must decide to fix it or ditch it. Making it useful again will require an investment of valuable time and unwanted frustration. Truthfully, the easier option is to just ditch it and get a new one.

Jesus had the same conundrum when it came to the broken people He encountered. He could have ditched them due to the frustrations and time they would take from His schedule. But not our loving Savior. He chose to stop and fix them. Jesus was committed to mending lives, piecing back together fractured relationships, and healing injured hearts when without a doubt, walking away would have been far less complicated.

Mary Magdalene was one of those. Seven demons controlled her body and mind. Walking away from this cursed woman was what everyone else had done, but not Jesus. His power and love cast out her demons and restored her to a useful life of service.

Zacchaeus was a flawed man when the Savior found him in a tree. This little man’s heart lay fractured among the glitter of his possessions. But as Jesus journeyed through Jericho, Zacchaeus’s broken life took precedence over His agenda. The Savior’s gift of time bound this man’s heart with compassion and restored Zacchaeus’s focus on what was important.

In my most glorious daydreams, I visualize myself investing time into lost and broken souls with a Jesus-heart. Then quickly I am jerked back into reality as I read the red letters of Luke 6:27-31 and discover the depth of this calling. The Jesus-method of restoring lives involves loving the difficult people, finding ways to bless those who hurt you, praying for those who spread rumors about you behind your back, sharing what you have with those you feel do not deserve it, and offering generosity when your spirit wearies of carrying them. Yikes!

So, should you ever wonder if tossing aside broken and hurting people would be easier than restoring them, wonder no more. But, we are called to love like Jesus loved, with a love so deep it will require time and frustration. But friend, as you choose today how to love, remember this: Jesus never ditches us when we find ourselves fractured. His loving desire is always to fix us.

Father God, we praise you for redeeming us, even in our times of brokenness.

Blessings,
Rita Cochrane

audio study.

It’s Digging Deep Writing week! It’s busy and it’s  kind of a sleep-deprived study marathon, but it’s fun. Here’s a short excerpt from the lesson I worked on yesterday. Most portions are full of questions and scriptures. This was just one little part in which I was on a small soapbox:

• Mothers must be joyful home-keepers. We really need to return to loving to cook, loving a well-ordered home, loving to hold and cuddle babies and loving to read to our children. We need to love the home-crafts that make our homes pretty and fun. But even more importantly, we need to love the showing of beautiful attitudes to our children. To think we cannot have those attitudes of joy in interacting with our children is to accept defeat before we have begun. No wonder our girls grow up in a hurry to get out of our homes and to be with whoever comes along, if we have made our homes situations of stress and power-clutching.
• Boys need to see their daddies be serious students of the word and your son needs to be 100 percent sure that Dad loves to be with him, throwing the ball or hunting the buck. Girls need to be with their moms in the kitchen and that kitchen needs to be a place of laughter. Girls need to see their moms loving daily Bible study and prayer.
• Ironically, I have found that the manipulative/abusive men are generally not the men who want quiet women at home.They are most generally men who want the immodest, boisterous women and they most often want them to bring home their half of the family funding. Teach your girls to reject this mentality and you will be halfway to victory.
• Teach your  boys and girls to wait on the Lord. That’s the hardest part. Tell them these things: “Take a relatively long time for the courtship, even if you think one day, you’d like a short engagement. Don’t be afraid of red flags. Look for them. If he wants you to carry your own bags when you come to visit his parents, see the flag waving. If she cannot keep her hands to herself or if she cannot cover her cleavage and thighs, see the flag waving.”
• I did not say the list would be a quick and easy fix. But, if some of us do not decide to break the maddening cycle of stress and work and money/power chasing, and take time for the important quality time that occurs in the middle of quantity time with our kids, then we will continue to inflict marriage angst on our kids.

I hope you are thinking about doing the study that begins next September with us. It’s the Word! It’s already blessing me. And it’s already making me very sleepy! =)

Cindy Colley

Ask any Christian and they will probably tell you that the most meaningful moments are witnessing someone put on their Lord in baptism. It never gets old!

Here are just a few reasons why baptisms bring such joy:

• Memories. You can’t help but think back to your own baptism, that very pivotal moment when you obeyed the gospel and had your sins washed away (Ac. 22:16).
• Family. A new brother, a new sister. Whoever came up out of that water is now a part of your family, thanks to the uniting blood of Christ (1 Tim. 3:15; 5:1-2).
• Priority. Sometimes a soul is ready to obey the gospel late at night (Ac. 8:25-33). We experienced just such an occasion this week as a dear lady didn’t want to wait a moment longer. It was after 10 pm when she arrived at the church building. I loved seeing the individuals who were willing to come at a moment’s notice to be there for her!
• Rejoicing. The best pictures are the ones that capture that first moment out of the water. They’re experiencing that beautiful “new life” promise (Rom. 6:4; 2 Cor. 5:17) and you can see it in their eyes. And what a contagious joy it is! When you look around at those gathered, you see it on their faces, too (as you see in the photo below).
• Encouragement. Negativity is all around us and sometimes it seems like things are going downhill fast. But every baptism is a reminder that the Word is still powerful, that hearts are still searching, that the church is still growing, and that God’s purpose is still reigning (Mk. 16:15-16)!

We often look forward to the happiness of Heaven. Surely baptisms are a taste of the joy to come and make us long for it even more!

“Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?”

(Acts 8:36)

Look at those amazing smiles!

By Kathy Pollard

WRITING A BOOK

The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) tell a story. They follow our Savior from the time of His birth until His resurrection. He lived His entire life for us through the eyes of these writers.

Most stories tell the good, the bad, and the ugly. In these books, there is nothing but good about our Lord, other than the rejection He suffered and the persecution He endured. The bad and the ugly come from the Romans and the religious leaders and their treatment of Jesus and His followers.

Though the writers of the Gospel were led by the Holy Spirit in writing the account of Jesus’ life, they have a part of themselves in the recording of His thirty-three  years on earth. Some of the accounts are found in all four books, and some only one. Each writer directs His account toward a specific group, a group familiar to them: Matthew writes to the Jews; Mark writes to the Gentiles; Luke writes to the Greeks who had become Christians; and John writes to all men. John’s book does not contain many of Jesus’ miracles and none of His parables. He also does not give us the details of Jesus’ birth. Instead, John returns to the beginning of time to show that Jesus was there, creating that which God designed.

So, if four people wrote the story of your life, what would be included? Would there be the good, the bad, and the ugly? If your life was as open and subject to scrutiny as was the life of Jesus, how would you hold up?

There is a book called “Daily Splashes of Joy,” written by Barbara Johnson. She has 365 gems that are inspirational and spiritually uplifting. As you consider someone writing about your life, think about these thoughts from Johnson’s book.

She says, “We should all live as though someone is writing a book about us.” But that thought is nothing new. Jesus said, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.”

In speaking of this life, she says, “The journey is sometimes as important as the destination.” I had to think about this, but then I considered the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. He decided that his life didn’t mean much. It wasn’t exciting, and the grass looked greener in a far country. So, he took his inheritance and went on his journey. There he “squandered his property in reckless living.” Circumstances changed his life. He had no money, no friends, and even nothing to eat. With a demeaning job of feeding pigs, “…he came to himself.” He made the long trip home and there humbled himself and begged for a job—not his position as the son of a family unit, but as a hired servant. The words he spoke tell us his journey was as important as the outcome. He said, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.” Sometimes it is that way with us. It takes a hard and difficult journey to bring us back to our heavenly Father.

Ms. Johnson says, ”Be kind to unkind people—they need it the most.” We show our wisdom by our good conduct. James says, “But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason, full of mercy and good fruits, impartial and sincere. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace” (James 3:13-18). In Draper’s Book of Quotations for the Christian World,” he says, “Kindness is love in work clothes.” Just read First Corinthians, and you’ll see just how much work goes into loving kindness.

This leads us to another inspirational quote. “People with a heart for God have a heart for people.” Paul, speaking to bondservants and masters says, “Obey your earthly master with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart” (Ephesians 6:5-6). Though he is speaking to slaves, as slaves of the Gospel, should we not do the same?

One of Johnson’s splashes of joy really speaks to the way we live our Christian lives. She says, “If we make a mistake in judgment, let it be on the side of mercy.” In Luke18:11-14, Jesus tells the story of the Pharisee and the publican. Both come to offer prayers to God in the temple. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed, “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” Notice his attitude. It is all about what he did and how “godly” he is. The publican would not raise his eyes to heaven because he did not think himself worthy. His prayer is very different; “God, be merciful to me a sinner!” Jesus proclaimed him to be justified because of his humble attitude. Mercy is about compassion and forgiveness, and this Pharisee shows neither of these.

In order to receive God’s mercy, we must show mercy. Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy” (Matthew 5:17). In order to benefit from God’s mercy, we must show mercy. If we do, we will live as though someone is writing a book about us. All the thoughts, words, deeds, every aspect of our lives is being recorded in the Book of Life to be read in judgment. Our journey is truly as important as the destination.

Sandra Oliver

In response to the previous article, there’s been a lot of discussion about whether or not Matthew 19:9 really does give us one situation in which an innocent spouse can divorce and remarry with the full blessing of God. I see no way around the passage.  The clause “except it be for fornication” is there for a reason and does not conflict with all the other passages that explicitly state, in various wordings, that marriage is for life. That’s why the exception clause is there. It’s there because marriage is holy and sanctified. Marriage is for life and the one who breaks that vow in fornication has trodden on the most sacred human-to-human vow. He or she (the one who has fornicated) can certainly be forgiven and restored to favor in every situation. He or she can and must be forgiven when penitent. In fact the forgiver(s) will be overjoyed at the penitence. But the restoration to position in the violated home is clearly the one place where the injured spouse is left in a decision-making place. I suggest that the injured spouse is the one human who can discern what is best for the holiness of his/her home at this juncture.

It has been argued that the penitent spouse is often spurned by the church; but, conversely, I have seen the penitent spouse welcomed back into the body with open arms on MANY occasions. The family of God, is ready, willing, praying to be able to forgive. We want that! But forgiveness has never been the same as restoration to position. It is just not the same. The forgiven child molester will not be placed in the preschool again. The forgiven drug dealer and addict will not be hired as the pharmacist. The convicted, but forgiven perjurer/forger will not be the FBI agent again. God allows restoration in the home, but he does not demand it. He demands forgiveness and the Christian wife longs to forgive and have the trust she once had or at least thought she had. But the passage is clear. She gets to discern and decide about the restoration. She often has innocent souls to consider and she alone can look at the past patterns of insincere (or sincere) penitence as she decides.  Many times, the forgiveness and restoration has occurred on multiple occasions and children are suffering. It’s interesting to think about the cycle of lying, fornication, hurt to children, etc…that could prevail in the life of a married man who is a womanizer, for instance, if there were never the Scriptural ability to stop the cycle of injury/restoration. Restoration without some extended consequences and rehabilitation is enabling the addiction.

We cannot take the liberty that is expressly given in this passage away from the innocent spouse. Christ’s words do not negate the passages which state that marriage is a life-long bond. But he does give one exception. That exception does not have to be mentioned each time the life-long nature of the bond is emphasized.

Cindy Colley