We Have an Anchor Part 4: God, Our Anchor

     For my fourth and final article in this series, I will be summing up what was talked about in these previous articles. If you haven't been able to read the previous articles, I'd like to encourage you all to go back and do so. 

     Hebrews 6:19 says, "We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain." I'm sure you're wondering, "What do the previous articles have to do with the fact that God is our anchor?" Well, after studying, we know that God, our anchor, is the most powerful being, who always keeps His promises, and who never lies. Our Anchor is perfect, and wonderful, and powerful. We can believe and have faith that God will keep His promises always. Our Anchor is God, who created everything. Isn't that wonderful? But what does that mean? What does it mean that God is our anchor? Well, I'll explain that.  

     Have y'all ever been in a boat? I have, but I was like, two years old, so I don't remember it. But assuming you know how boats and water work, you'll know that water isn't like land. No matter how heavy of a boat you have, no matter how sturdy, the water can still move under it, and move the boat without even noticing. If a boat doesn't have an anchor, then it's pretty useless because you'll end up somewhere where you didn't even intend on ending up. That's why we need an anchor. We need a good, strong anchor so we don't drift from the Word of God, and so that we don't have to worry about getting off track as long as we have God in our lives. He is our Anchor, and without Him we would drift so far from where we intended, and we wouldn't even realize it.  

     Today I would like to encourage all of you guys to always remember Who our Anchor is, and just how powerful He is, and to encourage you all to never drift away from what the Bible teaches.  

We Have an Ancho Part 3: God is Unchanging

     In my last article, I talked about God's promises that He kept. All the prophecies (well, a few of them) that happened, even though it may have taken quite some time. Well, today I am going to talk about the promises that were made and still haven't come to pass. The verse that I will be basing this article off of is Hebrews 6:18.

     In several passages we are promised that if we are baptized, then we will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and if we stay faithful, then we will live in heaven for eternity. We are also promised, however, that if we aren't baptized, and if we don't follow the Bible, then we won't enter heaven. In fact, in John 3:3 it says that we won't even see the kingdom. Now, based off of those prophecies we talked about earlier, and based off of all of them that came true, do you think that God is going to keep this promise? Do you think that God is going to change His mind and be like, "Well, you did do everything else but be baptized. It's really not that big of a deal, so why don't you come on in?!" No! If baptism weren't such a big deal, then why is it talked about so much? If we want to be saved, we have to be immersed in water (as the original language said) and believe what you are doing, but not just believe.

     The only time in the Bible where "faith" and "alone" are together, is James 2:24 which follow "not saved by". The verse says, "You see that a person is justified by works, and not by faith alone." Now, I'm sure you have head people say, "BUT WAIT! Ephesians 2:8 says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And it is not your own doing but the grace of God." If you take Ephesians 100% out of context, yes, this is a contradiction, which means we should throw the whole Bible out because one contradiction means that it's not perfect, and that faith alone won't save us anyway. However, if you read the context of the verse, you see that it's talking about baptism, and in James 2:24 it's talking about how we live our daily lives. You see, when we are baptized, is it ourselves that gives us the Holy Spirit? No. That's what it's talking about when it says that we aren't saved by our own works. I mean, just look at the wall of Jericho! Did the Israelites work hard and march around the city a lot? Yes, but was it them who knocked down the wall? No. They had faith which led to works, and because God saw that they were serious, He knocked down the wall.

    God always keeps His promises, and we have to remember that that can be a good thing for us, but it can also be a bad thing for us. We need to always be working hard, and remembering that we never know when life is going to end, but also that no matter what, if we believe and follow God's word,  that promise will be fulfilled, and we will end up in heaven. :)

We Have an Anchor Part 2: God and His Promisses

     God has made a lot of promises. Many of those promises we can find in the old testament, as they take the form of prophecies. There are also some prophecies in Revelation, that have either already happened (as we can see as we look back on history) or are going to happen in the future, but they will always come true, no matter what. God is never going to go back on His word, as we see in Hebrews 6:18 which says, "so that by two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie,..." So today, I am going to be looking at some of the promises that God has made that have come true, even though I won't quite be able to go through all of them. I won't really be talking about each of them, but I'd just like you to look at this list that came from the book of Matthew alone...

Prophecies                                                               Prophecies fulfilled

                          Jeremiah 31:15                                                         Matthew 2:18      

                          Isaiah 40:3                                                                Matthew 3:3
                          Isaiah 9:1-2                                                               Matthew 4:15-16

                          Isaiah 42:1-3                                                             Matthew 12:18-21

                          Isaiah 6:9-10                                                             Matthew 13:14-15

                          Psalm 78:2                                                                Matthew 13:35

                          Ezekiel 33:31                                                            Matthew 15:8-9

                          Zechariah 9:9                                                            Matthew 21:5

                          

     These are just a few of the many prophecies told in the old testament, and fulfilled in the new. I heard quite a few times that the odds of Jesus somehow fulfilled I think it was 8 of the prophecies would be the equivalent of going to Texas, filling the entire state two feet high with quarters, marking one of those quarters with a black marker, shuffling them, then stick someone in there blindfolded and tell them to find that quarter. There is no doubt that Jesus is the true Son of God, our anchor. I'd like to encourage y'all to not only go through this list of prophecies, but also to read your Bible daily, and find others for yourself. :)

We Have an Anchor part 1: No One Greater

     Starting today and ending on the 31st of this month, I will be doing a series of articles on God, our anchor, called, "We have an anchor". Today, I will be talking about Hebrews 6:13. The verse says, "For when God made a promise to Abraham, since He had no one greater by whom to swear, He swore by Himself," (ESV)

     We live in a world where it's all about me. I want more money. I want to look better. I want to be who I want to be, and no one can tell me otherwise. In the society we live in, we are told to be the greatest and the best. Now, there is nothing wrong with trying hard in life. That is actually very honorable. The thing is, however, that we need to remember that there is only one being that is perfect, or will ever be perfect and that is God. You see, when we live in a world where no one believes in God, then who becomes the highest being? Well, in the mind of the world, humans are the highest being; and because humans are imperfect and selfish, we tend to believe that our opinions are greater than everyone else's. Therefore, every human tends to believe that he or she is greater than everyone. However, there is no one greater than God, who, as we read in Genesis 1:1 created everything. He created you, and me, and that tree over there. He created our brains which created this computer, and He created our bodies so that we can work for our own food.

   John 13:16 says, "Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is no greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent them.." Say you went to a toy store and got a bunch of legos, and you built a huge city out of them. Who would be greater, you or the lego city? Well, I don't know about you, but I think that I'd be greater than the lego city and all the lego people. What if somehow, you managed to get the legos to come alive. First of all, that is super cool. Second, would you expect those lego people to not believe in your existence, and think that lego city just happened one day, and then go around saying that they were the best thing ever? No! You built them. If it weren't for you, there wouldn't even be a lego city. That's how God feels when we ignore Him, or when we believe that we are as great or even greater than God.

     There is no one more great or powerful than God, and that will never change. Every time we sin, we are showing God that we believe our way is better. Every time we sin, we are putting ourselves above God in our minds. So today, I would like to encourage you all to always be reverent and respectful in our actions, in our dress, and our speech, and to give Glory to God in everything.

Working Hard

     All throughout the Bible, we are told to work for God. We are told to teach others His word, but we have other things we need to do as well. We see a lot of this in Proverbs, where it talks about working hard in the field, or in Proverbs 31 where it talks about a woman who is honorable works hard, and things like this. Now, yes, this is Old Testament, but if you'll notice, this isn't a commandment completely, but talking about how it's wise to work hard. Doing things that are wise in the Bible never change, unless it's time that has changed. What I mean by that is now we don't make all our own blankets and things like it talks about in verse 22, or use a spindle as we see in verse 19. 

     Now, I'm not saying that we should to work hard, or ignore many verses because these are different times, sin is still sin, but we have to keep in mind that cultures do change, and we have cultural differences. We do, however, have to be careful about that because we cannot apply that to New Testament commandments. 

     All in the Bible it talks about how honorable it is to not only work for The Lord, but also in our daily lives. Whether it be doing laundry, doing chores, cooking, or simply keeping your room clean. There is always work to be done, and it's important to not be lazy. I mean, would you find it easy to respect someone who never worked a day in their life? I wouldn't. We need to remember that it's always important to be respectable, and hard working. Today, I would like to encourage all of you to do that. :)

Impressions

     Everyone has a different personality. Some are more quiet, some are more loud, some are more outgoing, some are more shy. We can typically pick up on things about people by just looking at them. Like, if they're standing alone, looking around, looking rather stiff, then they probably feel uncomfortable, or if someone is standing alone looking around with their arms to their side and looking more relaxed, then they're probably either bored or looking for someone. We can pick up on these things relatively easily, most of the time without even knowing it. Well, what is the impression that we leave with our clothing?

  Other than modesty, we can leave different impressions with different clothing. Say you were the manager of a company, and you were interviewing two different people. The first one was wearing a button up shirt, slacks, and nice shoes, and the second person was wearing shorts and an old t-shirt, and sandals (or even worse, SOCKS and sandals!!!). Based on appearance alone, who would you hire? Probably the first one, right?! Why? Well, for starters, you know that they're serious about the job, and they want to make a good impression. Also, you know that they are more likely to respect you and your authority, and will work hard. You can tell a lot about a person just by looking at them.

   If you can tell a lot about people by their clothes, then doesn't that apply to Christians as well? If you go around wearing low cut tops and mini skirts all the time, what impression are you giving others? Would you look at that person and automatically assume that they're a Christian? I probably wouldn't. We have to remember that people pick up on these things, and it's important to not only act like Christians, but show people in everything that we do that we have respect for ourselves, and others.

Also, please don't forget that I did open up a new twitter account under the user MModest_2012 if you'd like to follow that, or "like" Marvelously Modest on Facebook. :)

For Our Own Good

   Quick announcement: For those of you on Twitter, I have created a Twitter account for this blog under the user name MModest_2012, where I will be posting links to all my articles, Bible verses, etc. Also, if you're on Facebook I'd like to remind you guys that I do also have a page on there as well, if you'd like to "like" it, as well. :)

  In the back of my Bible some of those blank pages, I have kind of a table of contents of different subjects and the verses that go along with them, and I kinda add as I find more and more verses. Well, occasionally I like to look through them for article ideas, and as I was doing this a few days ago, I came across  Deuteronomy 6:24 which says, "And the Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always that He might preserve us alive, as we are this day." That is the verse that I will be writing about today.

     People in the world tend to think that those who follow the Bible live a dull life, and God is just here to make us miserable and all these laws are pointless. Well, that is not the case at all. You see, every single law is put there for a purpose. God has made all these laws because they are good for us. Think of it this way, if everyone loved each other the way they should, then we would have more evangelism in the world (because everyone would love everyone else enough to want to teach the Word to everyone) and there wouldn't be any gossiping, or steeling, murdering or any of that. Everyone would be giving, and helpful. Now tell me, is that really all that bad? Is it really that constricting and evil to care about others? 

    We have to remember that all of the laws that are given to us may seem ridiculous, but they're all for our own good. No, we can't be perfect, and no, just because we follow the Bible, that won't make our lives perfect. It will, however, all be worth it by the time we're up in heaven. :)

What We Fill Our Lives With

     We live in a time where nerds and geeks are basically taking over the entire internet world. Every geek/nerd/whatever you want to call yourself is different. There are so many different tv shows, movies, comics, etc. that we all have our collection of favorites and least favorites, and probably most of our friends are into the same things. Or, if you're not a geek, then you probably see all of this stuff all over the place. There is no escape (unless you never get on the internet, in which case you probably aren't reading this)!

     There are so many fandoms and shows and movies, and there is so much about them everywhere because it's very popular to be a geek! What about the Bible though? How much are we around the Bible, or study it, or tell others to read it? How many times in a day do we talk about our love of God, and how many times in a day do we spend talking about our love for this one tv show? It's okay to like these shows and movies and things, but it's WAY more important to talk about things that are on a more spiritual level than things that are on an earthly level. I know this is a shorter article, but I would like to encourage you to spend more time with your Bibles, and spend more time talking about it, and learning about it. :)

Sin > Sin

     We live in a time where it seems like everything is becoming legal. There's homosexuality, abortion, drugs, and many other things that shouldn't be legal, but are becoming not only legal, but common and sometimes actually we are encouraged to be supportive of. Now, I'm not going to go over why all of those things are wrong. Maybe I'll write an article on those later, but for now I'm going to be talking about the right and wrong ways to view and handle those things.

    Now, before I go into this, please keep in mind that I do not support these things. I'm not saying that they're right, or that we shouldn't try keeping those things outlawed or teach against them. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, I want to talk about how easy it is to be hateful towards that kind of thing. Now, it's okay to hate that someone lives in one of those kinds of life styles. It is not okay, however, to hate that person because of their choices. It is wrong to view ourselves as better than them just because of that. Maybe more knowledgeable, but knowledge does not equal rank. Knowledge means responsibility to spread that knowledge to others.

    Now, I want you to think about Tuesday's article, and if you haven't read it yet then I'd like to encourage you to do that because I'm going to be talking about it a little bit. If you'll remember, I talked about the fruits of the flesh, and how jealousy, strife, anger, and divisions are in the same category as sexual immorality, impurity, and sensuality. Guys, we all have sin. No sin is greater than any other sin. Say two people who weren't Christians died. One of those people was perfect in everything except they were homosexual, and the other was perfect in everything except they were always causing strife among others. Now, which of those will be punished more? Neither! Why is that? Well, were either of them perfect? No. Yes, homosexuality is a sin and we should be completely against it, but we should be equally against jealousy, and strife, and anger. We should also just be equally as patient, and treat them all with equal respect. We all have sin, and just because we are less familiar and less used to one, that doesn't meant that we don't also have sin that is just as revolting to God as all the other sins. That also means that we should be teaching those who have sin that we may be more used to, but should be just as against as all the other sins.

     Today I would like to encourage y'all to, not support these things, but not hate the people who do. I would like to encourage you guys to remember that all sin can cause us to stumble, and can keep us from getting into heaven. Mostly, I would like to encourage you to not accept some sins because it's more convenient, but to be against all sin equally, and to all sins, not sinners.

The Fruit of the Flesh

     We always read about the fruit of the spirit. At my home congregation we hosted a VBS which was on the fruit of the spirit this past summer, and we had a whole song about them (which was really helpful because now I have them memorized) which is great. I mean, it is very important to know the fruits of the spirit! What about the fruits of the flesh that are talked about right before that? Well, that is what I'm going to talk about today, and on Thursday in my next article.

     First of all, I'm going to be talking about what the fruits of the flesh are. According to Galatians 5:19-21, they are "sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions [disputes], divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these." Okay, before I move on I want to explain what it means by "fits of anger" because a lot of people tend to believe that that makes anger a sin. No. Even Jesus got angry as we learn in Matthew 21. Also, in James 1:19 it says, "Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger;" Does this say not to get angry? No, it says slow to anger. Just like we should be slow to speak. If getting angry was a sin then so would speaking. Also, Psalms 4:4 talks about getting angry and not sinning. We need to be careful about that.

    Okay, so now that we know what the fruits of the flesh are, what does "fruit of the flesh" even mean. Well, when the Bible talks about fruit, unless I'm forgetting something, it's always talking about results. Like, say you planted a strawberry seed. What would the result of that be? Strawberries! Which is the fruit. Also, if you remember, "flesh" is usually used to describe man's selfish ways. So the "fruits of the flesh" are the results of man's selfish ways. Now, I'm not going to get into this right now, but if you'll notice, envy, rivalries, dissensions, drunkenness, all that is in the same category as idolatry, sexual immorality, impurity, and sensuality.

     As I read about the fruits of the flesh, and as I read about the fruits of the spirit, I see one thing. The thing that I see is that God's way will always lead to good, holy things, while the work of the flesh will always lead to sin and strife, and hard times. God set up these laws for us to protect us from these things. Now, I'm not saying that we won't have problems, but if everyone treated others with kindness, wouldn't everything be so much easier? About 90% of the world's problems would be gone. Now, how can we properly love someone and treat them if we are jealous of them? How can we truly say that we love someone if we hold grudges against them, or have strife with them, or completely ignore them and avoid them at all costs? That's not love. Wouldn't it be so much better if we didn't have to deal with these things? The fruit of the flesh is selfish, but the fruit of the spirit is always selfless.