Been down a few days, since the September bout with a very nasty bug that put me in the hospital, it seems it doesn’t take much to get a ‘relapse’ although I don’t think that is what it is, just system appears more vulnerable – doing better today.

Sunny outside but with a biting wind, yesterday we hit 67 in our neck of the woods, not supposed to go that high today, we shall see.  This doesn’t effect, Carla, but with plants starting to share their pollen, I can do without it.

Both mountains are covered with clouds, but down here is sunshine and trees starting to bloom out, a few crocus have shown their faces, and Carla can go out and play in the dirt.

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“As Christian we need to understand there are consequences for trusting in anything other than God, who is able to meet all our needs - natural or spiritual.”   David Odunaiya

Acts 17:21 “(For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.)”  KJV

The world is forever coming up with ‘new’ ideas on how to be a spiritual, or at least a good person.  One who is at ‘peace’ with himself and at peace with the universe.

As Christians we must be very careful not to fall into traps that sound good, but once evaluated have flaws and holes in the way they interpret the Bible that you could drive a Mack Truck through.  That is if they even acknowledge ANY Biblical principles.

When we attend secular workshops, conferences or training we are often introduced to ‘new’ techniques in relaxing or opening our minds to new ways to make ourselves more positive and thus more effective.

At first sight these things may not seem all that bad, they have a purpose and they seem to work – but they do not line up with the Word of God, who has many verses on how to relieve our stress and concerns.

There are always movements by ‘religious’ leaders, also.  The prosperity movement that tells us that God will give us wealth untold and everything money can buy if we just trust in Him to provide it. 

It sounded good, but didn’t hold up under the light of the Gospel; and it has been pretty well debunked – although it rears its ugly head from time to time.

That isn’t what the Bible says, and when we start focusing on ‘wanting’ things because we think we deserve them by ‘trusting’ God we will find ourselves drifting farther and farther away from God.  

Or the preachers that preached if you tell God what you want done and then not follow through as if it has already been accomplished then you need to work on your faith in God.

That was driven home by riding with the preacher that told the traffic lights to turn green and then continued as if they were, fortunately for that drive, it did.  Nope wasn’t interested in going anywhere with him.

But how foolish we are when we think God is just there to do our bidding.  That He must answer to us and not the other way around.

I remember one department head that would go to a conference or meeting and immediately come back and try to implement what he had learned without considering if that was right for his department – not pointing fingers, there were times I found myself in that category and sometimes learned that it wasn’t a proper fit.

I can remember attending a Sunday School conference where the emphasis was on Bus ministry.  They had a young minister from a church in the mid-west come and speak and then give workshops on how to build a bus ministry.

Soon after churches all over the state were going to build a bus ministry and bring in more and more children.

The ideas that minister gave were solid, they worked for him; BECAUSE he had the leadership and drive to get others to help with it.  It was a demanding work.

Every Saturday they went door to door, reminding those children who came, where and when the bus would be coming in their neighborhood.  They passed out leaflets so they could get even more children to come.

They had the classroom space and the teachers to work with the children.  They had the drivers and the volunteers on the bus greeting the kids, and giving them cookies or something to put in their stomachs since many were coming without breakfast.

Every Saturday.  Every Sunday.  Week in and Week out, 52 weeks a year; and then follow-up during the week with first time riders.  

It took a full commitment from the Church Body for this ministry to work and it took time to get that commitment.

He had the vision, the personality and the ability to excite his congregation and it had been a successful campaign for some years.  AND of course, the Holy Spirit was deeply involved in the process and the work was blessed.

However, it doesn’t necessarily translate to every church, every community it takes time and a willingness to help others find that dedication – and, to my knowledge, none of the churches that started a bus ministry after that conference kept it going for very long.

“New, Improved” may sound good for selling soap, but we have a Gospel to ‘sell’ and “New and Improved” doesn’t cut it.

We get wrapped up in what other churches or other parts of the country are doing; we see the world capturing our young peoples’ minds and hearts with their trickery and psychological maneuvers and we think if we don’t duplicate that we are going to lose our youth.

While adapting some of the techniques might work with the mission we have, we want to be careful about looking so much like the world that the world cannot tell us apart from them.

God’s mind doesn’t change; it is the same as it was in the beginning.  HE is God, when man fell to sin He promised a Redeemer, He sent the Redeemer in the human body of Jesus, who bled and died for our sins, AND whose death was accepted by God as the sacrificial lamb for all that believe on His Name.

Anything that trivializes that fact, anything that contradicts God’s Word needs to be not only confronted but discarded.

We are all subject in one way or another with the temptation of trying out ‘new’ ideas without questioning their validity – we cannot allow that to happen, particularly when it comes to our relationship with God, His Son and His Holy Spirit – and how that translates to our relationship with others.

There are new ways of communicating to the world who God is and who Christ is; while the social media can become a hazard to us, where information can be put out there that has no semblance of truth, it can also be used to tell others about Him.

Social media, in and of itself is neutral, it is how we treat it that it can be either life affirming, or lead to the path of destruction.

Lord, may any ‘new’ idea or way of presenting your Word be fully examined before I embrace it as the ‘next great thing.’

Later, Art (-: