Study from God’s Word… Esther, Chapters 1 – 4 … Passage for Reflection: Esther 1: 12 … NIV But when the attendants delivered the King’s command, Queen Vashti refused to come. Then the King became furious and burned with anger.
My Journal for Today: I would expect that others reading along with me, like myself, have read the intriguing story of Esther before in your Bible studies. It is a wonderful story of political intrigue and personal spiritual character on the part of the main heroine of the story, the Jewess, Esther. But there is another precursor to Esther’s story, another courageous sub-heroine, whose story should not be lost in the focus on our Hebrew heroine; and that is the story of the King Xerxes’ bride, Vashti.
Here was a Queen who was obviously a beautiful lady and a highly respected queen in the court of King Xerxes. And she receives a summons from the King to appear before the court in the midst of drunken revelry where the king wants to show off the beauty of his queen; and she flat refuses to be degraded in this way. Well, the rest is history; and though the kind displays a bit of a soft side banishing his queen instead of having her beheaded or killed in some public execution, she still loses all access to the finery of being the queen because of her integrity. And we shouldn’t lose sight of the character lesson of this fine woman; and who knows [?], … perhaps her model might have influenced our heroine, Esther, who later would be called on to confront the king for the glory of God.
The application question from Dr. Smith in this morning’s devotional highlight is this: ”Am I sufficiently courageous to do the right thing even when the consequences are potentially disastrous?” And here we all have to do our own 2nd Cor. 13: 5 [linked for study] inventory of faith. And I don’t know what our individual confrontations of character might be. Perhaps you might be called to do the “right thing” at work by refusing to buckle to corporate pressures when your job might be on the line for such an action. Perhaps there are friends at work or in your social circles who mock God openly; and you might be called on to stand in the gap for your faith and confront your “friends” about their disbelief. Maybe there are those who are declaring that abortion is okay or “gay marriage” should be allowed; and you can’t stand back in the shadows any longer and let such opinions go unchallenged … even though the results may be being socially ostracized.
The lessons of Queen Vashti in today’s text, and later Queen Esther, tell us that character matters, especially when the prevailing politically correct forces are spitting in the face of Godly values. When – and how – we might be called on to stand up for our faith, I don’t know. But I do know we certainly have ample biblical examples; and two of them are being brought to our attention by studying the book of Esther. Had it not been for the courage of Queen Vashti, the later courage of Esther to save her people from a holocaust of horror would have not taken place; and so we get a two-for-one lesson in female courage and Godly honor by seeing how these two women stood up to the male dominant powers of the day.
Hooray for Queen Vashti; and hooray for those who stand in the gap for Godly values today!
My Prayer for Today: Lord, give me the courage to be like Queen Vashti or Esther when I’m confronted by ungodliness in my life. Amen
Showing posts with label political incorrectness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label political incorrectness. Show all posts
Sunday, October 03, 2010
Sunday, August 01, 2010
2010 – August 1 – I Can’t Help Myself
Bogger’s Note: New Month, … new day, … new opportunities to share Christ and His truth with others.
Study from God’s Word… Jeremiah, Chapters 17 - 20 … Passage for Reflection: Jeremiah 20: 8 – 9 … NIV 8 Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long. 9 But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.
My Journal for Today: When I read and study through these chapters of Jeremiah’s book, I really get a sense of the humanity, yet the humility, of this “weeping prophet,” chosen by God to bring a message to His recalcitrant, yet chosen, people. Jeremiah must’ve hated having to speak out to a people who had lost their sense of what God had done for them.
Yesterday, I gave a talk to a group of about 75 African-American high school football players. My message was on why God wants us to live lives of purity, especially sexually, so that He, The Lord, will be glorified. And as I talked to these young men, many of whom were drifting off asleep, I could read their thoughts, which projected, “Why should I even listen to this old, white, dude?!” Yet, there were a few – a very few – eyes which caught mine, … a few young men who wanted to hear the message of truth I had been led by God and this opportunity to share with them; and it was for those few, a remnant of believers, that I had a burn to speak on … to share the message of God’s truth with those few who might hear.
You know, my devotional author, Dr. Smith likened what Jeremiah must’ve felt like in those days when very few were listening to him to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer must’ve felt like just prior to WW2. You probably know that Bonhoeffer was the Christian theologian who was imprisoned by the Nazis for preaching against them; and he was executed by them in one of the holocaust camps just a few weeks before the end of the war.
Interestingly enough, Bonhoeffer could’ve ridden out the war in New York; but he chose to book passage on the last steamer allowed by the U.S. to go to Germany from the USA in 1939. Bonhoeffer went back to Germany because he had “a burn” in his heart for “his people,” the Germans, whom he could see were following a devil, Hitler, into unrighteousness. In his own words, writing to another theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer in 1939 wrote, "I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security."
It’s tough to be a Christian, standing up for God, when you see the culture drifting into sin, death, and decay. One feels like the proverbial salmon swimming upstream with headwaters that flow rapidly against us. But like Jeremiah and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one must continue to speak out against ungodliness when we see it. Sometimes I hate seeing men fall like flies on the battle fields of life, succumbing, even as Christians, to the flesh and the world and Satan’s ploys. And like Jeremiah, it’s tough to have a burn to deliver a message which is considered politically incorrect at best and downright threatening at worst.
But like Jeremiah, those of us who have God’s message, especially those of us who know what has been charged in passages of truth like Acts 1: 8 and Matthew 28: 19-20 [oh, I hope you know those by now], we have the burn that Jeremiah or Bonhoeffer had for God’s message because we have the same Holy Spirit driving us who drove those men. And that Spirit is not the Spirit of the victim, it’s THE SPIRIT of victory (i.e., see 2nd Tim 1: 7 - linked).
I hope you feel driven, as do I, to keep on keeping on in our degenerating culture, … to bring the messages of truth from God’s word to God’s people and to the lost.
My Prayer for Today: As You are my witness, Lord, I carry on! Amen
Study from God’s Word… Jeremiah, Chapters 17 - 20 … Passage for Reflection: Jeremiah 20: 8 – 9 … NIV 8 Whenever I speak, I cry out proclaiming violence and destruction. So the word of the LORD has brought me insult and reproach all day long. 9 But if I say, "I will not mention him or speak any more in his name," his word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.
My Journal for Today: When I read and study through these chapters of Jeremiah’s book, I really get a sense of the humanity, yet the humility, of this “weeping prophet,” chosen by God to bring a message to His recalcitrant, yet chosen, people. Jeremiah must’ve hated having to speak out to a people who had lost their sense of what God had done for them.
Yesterday, I gave a talk to a group of about 75 African-American high school football players. My message was on why God wants us to live lives of purity, especially sexually, so that He, The Lord, will be glorified. And as I talked to these young men, many of whom were drifting off asleep, I could read their thoughts, which projected, “Why should I even listen to this old, white, dude?!” Yet, there were a few – a very few – eyes which caught mine, … a few young men who wanted to hear the message of truth I had been led by God and this opportunity to share with them; and it was for those few, a remnant of believers, that I had a burn to speak on … to share the message of God’s truth with those few who might hear.
You know, my devotional author, Dr. Smith likened what Jeremiah must’ve felt like in those days when very few were listening to him to what Dietrich Bonhoeffer must’ve felt like just prior to WW2. You probably know that Bonhoeffer was the Christian theologian who was imprisoned by the Nazis for preaching against them; and he was executed by them in one of the holocaust camps just a few weeks before the end of the war.
Interestingly enough, Bonhoeffer could’ve ridden out the war in New York; but he chose to book passage on the last steamer allowed by the U.S. to go to Germany from the USA in 1939. Bonhoeffer went back to Germany because he had “a burn” in his heart for “his people,” the Germans, whom he could see were following a devil, Hitler, into unrighteousness. In his own words, writing to another theologian, Reinhold Niebuhr, Bonhoeffer in 1939 wrote, "I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people... Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose but I cannot make that choice from security."
It’s tough to be a Christian, standing up for God, when you see the culture drifting into sin, death, and decay. One feels like the proverbial salmon swimming upstream with headwaters that flow rapidly against us. But like Jeremiah and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one must continue to speak out against ungodliness when we see it. Sometimes I hate seeing men fall like flies on the battle fields of life, succumbing, even as Christians, to the flesh and the world and Satan’s ploys. And like Jeremiah, it’s tough to have a burn to deliver a message which is considered politically incorrect at best and downright threatening at worst.
But like Jeremiah, those of us who have God’s message, especially those of us who know what has been charged in passages of truth like Acts 1: 8 and Matthew 28: 19-20 [oh, I hope you know those by now], we have the burn that Jeremiah or Bonhoeffer had for God’s message because we have the same Holy Spirit driving us who drove those men. And that Spirit is not the Spirit of the victim, it’s THE SPIRIT of victory (i.e., see 2nd Tim 1: 7 - linked).
I hope you feel driven, as do I, to keep on keeping on in our degenerating culture, … to bring the messages of truth from God’s word to God’s people and to the lost.
My Prayer for Today: As You are my witness, Lord, I carry on! Amen
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