Talk of JESUS .com

Tag: family

  • Respect

    1 Timothy 5:1 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father…

    I recently had an unfortunate experience of misunderstanding at a time when I needed encouragement from a brother or sister in the Lord or anyone else.

    If you look closely above my own smile you will see much white hair. 🙂 Yes, in some instances (even if I don’t like to admit to all of my 6+ decades) I am an older man.

    Of course, none of us likes rebuke. As parents we have given many rebukes of improper behavior to our children. As husbands, we have heard proper rebuke from our own wife (and they, from us). IN THE LORD, with His love I would hope.

    Just yesterday I had to rebuke a young man for a wrong attitude toward Christ. He said, “We go to church, etc., as an excuse of calling themselves ‘christians’ like those faithful to Christ Jesus by the truth of the fruit of our lives. My point to him was that “We are the church, etc.” and must live as Christ commands and live by His higher standards for us.

    Paul writes to Timothy of these higher standards for our lives.

    Christians are NOT supposed to look and behave like just anybody. We must be a man like Christ or a woman like Christ in our relationships to others — especially other Christians — our new family and His.

    Take a look at some of these standards for the church, that is: you and me.

    1 Timothy 5

    Instructions for the Church

    Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.

    3 Honor widows who are truly widows. 4 But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. 5 She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers night and day, 6 but she who is self-indulgent is dead even while she lives. 7 Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. 8 But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.

    “Everyone needs compassion, a love that’s never failing…”

    During difficult times I nearly weep at the very hearing of those words.

    Think of all the deserted older men and older women in nursing homes at this time of the year. Their grown children (even christian children) often abandon them in favor of the hustle and bustle and worldly priorities of their own lives. Once, we took care of our aging moms and dads in our own homes as long as we were physically able. We sacrificed and honored our mother and our father all the days of our lives.

    Once, christians honored marriage and would never break up a home for their own ends (let alone continue to call themselves christians); but now christian divorce, hated by God, rebuked by Jesus, and a breaking of our own covenant to God and witnesses “until we are parted by death,” is as prevalent as with those who would never claim Christ as Lord. Our Christian marriages are the very symbol of Christ’s relationship He desires for His bride, the church. [SEE: Ephesians 5: ]

    Ephesians 5: 31 “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

    32 This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.

    33 However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.

    As you, dear Christian brother, dear Christian sister, approach this turning of the year from the passing old to the new, consider the nature of how we are called to have changed by our taking up the cross to follow Jesus Christ, to witness His love in our relationships with others and by our own personal shining example to all others.

    Put On the New Self

    If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.2 Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth. 3 For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. 4 When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.

    5 Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. 6 On account of these the wrath of God is coming.

    7 In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. 8 But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth.

    9 Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices 10 and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator…

    12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,13 bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

    14 And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. 15 And letthe peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body.

    And be thankful. 16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs,with thankfulness in your hearts to God. 17 And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

    Rules for Christian Households

    18 Wives, submit to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.

    19 Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.

    20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord.

    21 Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged…

    23 Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, 24 knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward.

    You are serving the Lord Christ. 25 For the wrongdoer will be paid back for the wrong he has done, and there is no partiality.

    My dear, beloved family of Christ Jesus,

    We live a new life of sacrifice and obedience to scripture, truthfulness of our word, and witness to our Lord and Savior, who offered Himself as acceptable sacrifice for our many sins. Do not live, dear brother, dear sister, in your over-bearing selfishness of your own flesh. Humble yourselves before our Groom, you His church and His Bride.

    Be Holy, as our Lord is Holy.

    Love one another, as I have loved you.  – John 13:34

  • Christmas: past, present, future

    Christmas: past, present, future

    BAH! humbug!

    You know the story; but the man is converted in the end by what has been, what is, and what will be.

    What about you? Do you have a Christmas story to warm our hearts?

    Please share it, by way of a COMMENT. Your witness is important to me and to others.

    Here are just a few from my past:

    • I was told frequently that my parents had to walk to the grocery store for food and milk after the big snow storm of 1950. I was just four months old at Christmas. (Sorry, no pictures – but my sister probably has them.)

    Do your Christmas pictures tell a story? *like the family pictures we used to see on Christmas cards? – Go ahead an send me one at roger.harned@yahoo.com if you would like us to post it.

    • From a long ago as I remember, we all had personal stockings with our own name on it. Roger, Jenny & Eddie *in that order. And then much later, Kenny. Yes, they were hung by the chimney of our real fireplace with care. And on Christmas morning we always had to open all the gifts in the stocking before the big presents. We always had an apple and and orange in it.
    • When Rachel was born, Christmas got much bigger in our home (although we always went to church Christmas eve, went caroling, went to Christmas parties and more). Her stocking was hung by the chimney with care. Yes, it was a real fireplace with real wood fires. Rachel’s stocking *even at Grandma’s was mysteriously bigger than everyone else’s.

    I have a picture of me and Rachel when she was about 5. I’ll see if I’m allowed to post it. (I will not get to spend Christmas with my children this year. Songs about home for the holidays and mistletoe and other warm and artificially nostalgic memories sometimes make me sad instead of able to show ‘joy to the world.’ Even in Christian households, Christ must be more a part of Christmas and the love of God to send His only Son to a manger for a perfect act of love ought to be our memory to break though the silent nights.

    Enough nostalgia. Please share your Christmas stories.

    *Look for my Christmas messages to continue from Advent messages posted this week on Beatitudes for the Multitudes beginning Monday, December 23, 2013.

    Don’t be a Scrooge and keep your Christian Social Witness to yourself.

    Please share it with us.

    Roger

  • No More Tears

    No More Tears

    Each man (especially analytic types of men and women like me) will consider sin and judgment, punishment and grace, in the light of heaven and eternal life. Few will give much consideration to our own possibility of judgment followed by eternal punishment: after all, have we not each chosen our sin knowing the consequence of death?

    Death (the elephant in the room, as an older sister called it) is not much spoken of by sinners or even by the forgiven. Eternal life is mentioned by those covered by the grace of the Cross as a given, often not in light of the consequence of our present fruit of grace. So few christians consider that we may indeed be the fruitless branch the Gardner will prune to give more abundant life to the remaining branches in need of more fruit, namely, the fruit of the Spirit.

    My dear brothers and sisters, how we long for the place of eternal joy and the heaven where there shall be no more tears.

    The Revelation of Jesus Christ to John illustrates a tender scene of those who have come out of the great tribulation.

    Revelation 7

    15 “Therefore they are before the throne of God,

    and serve him day and night in his temple;
    and he who sits on the throne will shelter them with his presence.
    16 They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore;
    the sun shall not strike them,
    nor any scorching heat.
    17 For the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their shepherd,
    and he will guide them to springs of living water,
    and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

     

    How can there be no more tears?

    When my beloved wife died, I endured many days of mourning with many tears. When your child dies young or before you, you will mourn your loss with many tears.  When your life-long friend or your relative of your own blood and flesh and ancestry dies and leaves you here on your own, you will mourn and miss the wonderful times with many tears.

    Yet the hope of the eulogy is that we will be reunited with our loved ones in heaven. How can that be?

    Only through the grace of Christ Jesus and His Cross of sacrifice for our sins.

    Those, and only those, who have place their souls in the hands of the Lord will already have made their place in eternity with us. What a joyous reunion with lost loved ones it will be!

    Many place their hope of heaven falsely in their own goodness or in the ultimate goodness of God that a loving God will not punish our sin with eternal torment and the second death.  We will not see these in heaven, nor even remember the days of their flesh and sin.

    Some, even relatives and near loved ones, expound unfounded hope that death of the flesh is death of the soul – the end. It is not. The Bible and the words of Christ Jesus are clear that the death of the flesh is only the death of the flesh.

    Do you really believe that you are not more than the flesh and bones and brain of your body? Is your meaning of death brain-dead or death of the heart (as if you can observe the very death of who you are as created by God for this temporal body)?

    Do you really think that you are not a soul? Do you not understand that you are not part of the earth anymore than you are part of your bones and blood and flesh?

    Who are you?

    You are a soul, created by God with a body.  Who are angels? Not spirits from bodies, but souls created only with a spirit and no body such as given to man. Yet the Bible is clear that when a man dies, our spirit does not die. The Bible is also clear that our spirit will receive a resurrected body – a risen body – to join once more with our spirit eternal in Christ.

    Without dwelling on the punishment of hell for those who refuse in this short life to come to Christ and follow Jesus in His new righteousness for us, I have often thought of Heaven and how my joy may finally return. It seems that Judgment demands the punishment of the souls of some, even many I love. If I miss these in some way already, how can I not miss these loved ones destined for Hell after I am taken up to Heaven by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ?

    ALL will pass away: every body, every soul, even the earth will pass away into an end and a judgment and a new untainted sinless life with God OR destruction in punishment.  Yet some, in Christ, will have no more tears… no more suffering from the sin of this world.

    Revelation 21:

    Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.

    And I saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.

    And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.

    He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

    How can there be ‘no more tears?”

    The answer would seem that we will no more remember them.

    We will not remember that sinful relative, that fun person who reveled in sin at the expense of heaven. We will not remember that friend who clung to Buddha or Muhammad or ancient idolatry of ancestry to reject the grace of Jesus Christ as Lord. As nice and good as these all seemed – as much as we loved these – there is only one way we, of the new heaven and the new earth will not miss them.

    We will remember them no more, forever.

    No more tears.

    Thanks to our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus, God with us. We are with Him, forever.