He was following a duty, and this duty impelled him to make his greatest effort.”
              –James Oliver Curwood  (The River’s End)

    “You are of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look on wickedness.  Why do You look on those who deal treacherously, and hold Your tongue when the wicked devours a person more righteous than he?”
              –Habakkuk 1:13 (NKJV)
————————
How to Live in a Pagan, Apostate, and Foolish World

Key Verse:  “We know that we are of God, and the whole world is in the power of the evil one.” –1 John 5:19 (RSV)

         “In other words, we know what it is to be grieved by the sin of this world; we do not merely look at the world with a political eye or with a social eye or with an eye of benevolence.  No, we see things as God Himself sees them.  Evil becomes a reality, sin becomes a reality in the new sense, and we see these powers, these evil forces that are in the world and which are manipulating the life of the world in their enmity against God and we are concerned about that.  We feel that God is in it and that we are likewise in it, in that we are concerned to bring the purposes of God to pass.  We meditate, we pray; we do everything that we are capable of in furthering the kingdom of light, so that the kingdom of evil may be finally routed.  We are sharers in God’s thought and in God’s enterprise and in God’s whole interest in this life and world.”
                     –D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Think hard about the about statement.  How do you look upon the political scene?  Is it through the eyes of God’s Word, or through your own opinions?  Are you serving the Lord or are you serving the culture or are you serving yourself?  Are you a friend of God or the friend of the world?  The answers to these questions are important if you are really concerned about having a relationship, being in fellowship with the Father.
    Fellowship means that things are shared.  If the Holy Spirit is grieved, are you grieved?  Are you a partaker in the things of God, and part of that means picking up your cross daily and following Him?  If you are to have true fellowship, a real relationship then you will have shared interests and shared purposes.
    There must be an intense desire to do the will of God.  It is not in word only, but throughout all aspects of life.  We should hunger and thirst after righteousness, not our own desires.  In fact, His desires should become our desires.  There is promise of the Scripture that is ours to believe and take to heart, however, most only take the second have.  Remember, that all promises have a condition.  Look at Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself also in the Lord, And He shall give you the desires of your heart.” (NKJV)  Most claim the second phrase, but forget that for God to give us the desires of our heart we must first delight in Him and in doing that we will have the desires of His heart.
    Look at what Paul writes, “For it is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure.” (Philippians 2:13, NKJV).  We need to read the Word of God to know His will.  He is with us through the journey of life.  He leads us; He reveals His will to us; He opens doors and shuts them; sometimes He puts up barriers and obstacles as well as removing them, and He will deal with us.  I read recently that, “Not all storms come to disrupt your life, some come to clear your path.”

A mind, like a home, is furnished by its owner, so if one’s life is cold and bare he can blame none but himself.”
              –Louis L’Amour (Bendigo Shafter)

    “Holding fast the word of life, so that I may rejoice in the day of Christ that I have not run in vain or labored in vain.”
              –Philippians 2:16(NKJV)
————————-
How to Live in a Pagan, Apostate, and Foolish World

Key Verse:  “We know that we are children of God and that all the rest of the world around us is under Satan’s power and control.”  –1 John 5:19 TLB)

In the last several decades the majority of people have said that the most important thing about going to church is the fellowship.  I wonder if that is true now.  The “pandemic” has put a damper on fellowship, but an important part of the church is fellowship–first with God, then with other believers.  To close church doors when they most need to be open is next to blasphemy.
    True fellowship is broken because of sin.  Sin has put up a barrier and man cannot face God apart from the Cross.  Man was doomed to God’s wrath, but God’s wrath fell upon the head of Jesus Christ.  Now, through Jesus, the barrier is down and man can have fellowship with God.
    To have fellowship there must be a fundamental sameness.  You are no longer of the world so you do not have the sameness of the world, fellowship with the world is broken.

         “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?”
                   –2 Corinthians 6:14 (NKJV)

         “By which have been given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust.”
                   –2 Peter 1:4 (NKJV)

Yet so many “Christians” want their part with the world and have fellowship with God.  That cannot be!  The Cross put you on one side, so why yearn for where you once were?  We share His life, we share His nature, and we are to produce His fruit.  Christ now lives in us, we are no longer bound by sin and under the sway of the world–the evil one.
    To have fellowship there must also be the love of the same things.  “A man’s own character will necessarily be determined by the character of the god whom he worships,” so stated William Barclay.  You are of God therefore you need to know His character so that yours will begin to look like His.  If you actually seek fellowship (relationship) there are certain things a Christian must believe.  True fellowship (relationship) will bring true doctrine and practice.  Fellowship means that things are shared–do you know enough of God’s Word to input them into your life?  There are shared interests and shared purposes.

         “You cannot have communion, you cannot have conversation with a person without knowing that person–there is nothing distant, there is an intimacy and a knowledge.”
                   –D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

    Take some of the things you do and see if they line up with God’s Word.  When a curse word erupts from your mouth, remember the Lord is there–did you embarrass your Friend?  When you became angry, did you feel the tap of the Holy Spirit on your shoulder?  Saturday comes around, what are your plans?  Did you consult the Lord to see if they are okay with Him?  Remember, if you love Him, you will keep His commandments (John 14:15).

Everybody has to come to grips with life.  Both the natural aspects like family, women, and work.  But everybody must also come to grips with their creator and deal with their soul.”
              –Cliff Hudgins  (Viejo and the Outlaw)

    “For the message of the cross is foolishness [absurd and illogical] to those who are perishing and spiritually dead [because they reject it], but to us who are being saved [by God’s grace] it is [the manifestation of] the power of God.”
              –1 Corinthians 1:18 (Amplified)
—————————–
How to Live in a Pagan, Apostate, and Foolish World

Key Verse:  “We know that we are of God, and the whole world is under the sway of the evil one.”  –1 John 5:19 (HCSB)

    Look at the news, if you dare.  The state of the world is baffled, skeptical, and cynical.  If you don’t think so just look at the way in which they have handled COVID-19.  They cannot make up their mind about it.  Mask to three masks, the vaccine works, but not all the time.  They keep changing their minds–they are baffled.  Being baffled they tend to just put bandaids on the sore instead of digging out the root of the disease.  
    Yet the world refuses to look at Christ.  He is the cure.  Why is it that people have such trouble with the truth?  Instead of accepting the truth, the world will pour out its mockery and in some places it wrath upon it.  Ted Baehr writes, “The Church once shaped Western civilization…  Now our culture is shaped by the mass media of entertainment.  The results are confusion at best and vile paganism at worst.”  The new progressive culture will get rid of Dr. Seuss yet allow the filthiness of rap music to be allowed.
    The Christian has been saved from the false hope of the world.  He knows that the explanation is not a particular idea, nation, or man; the explanation is man’s rebellion against God.  This act of rebellion produced fear–then jealousy, envy, and sorrow.

         “It can all be traced back to the fact that men and women were really meant to live a life in communion with God, and that happiness, in a full and final sense, is only really possible when they obey the law of their own being; and that as long as they refuse to do that, they can experience nothing but turmoil and unhappiness and wretchedness.”
                   –D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones

The world rebels against God and, therefore, produces its own miseries.  Man, in his own sin, brings about misery to this world.  “Because of sin we are in a world like this, and the world is like this because of sin.” (Lloyd-Jones)
    One problem is that Christians and others in the world, think that Christian behavior is to be expected.  How can this be in a world that does not believe or accept Christ?  Why should the world then apply Christian principles?  They have pushed His moral code aside (and with the last election many Christians did as well).
    There is unrest in the world because of the rejection of Jesus Christ.  The world is baffled because they have gone against God’s moral code and value system.  “Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our souls are restless until they find their rest in Thee,” said Augustine centuries ago.  Man is restless, man is rebellious, man seeks to go his own way and therefore there is no rest, no security, no peace–only a delusion.  
    “The supreme need of the world, and of people as individuals, is a knowledge of God, fellowship with Him and communion with Him, and that, says the Bible, is the central need.” (Lloyd-Jones)  Yet man, in his foolishness, thinks that he has a better way.  Man with his new enlightened woke culture knows better than the Almighty God, and thus we have the wickedness, the evil, and the miseries in this world.

Dull can get a man killed in these parts.  You tend to let up and get lazy with your caution.”
              –Lou Bradshaw (Hickory Jack)

    “The desire of the lazy man kills him, For his hands refuse to labor.”
              –Proverbs 21:25(NKJV)
————————–
I have never seen an angel (unless you count my wife who is continually serving, which is something that angels do).  I know that there is the chance that I have encountered an angel, for at times we entertain them unawares.  Most of the time there are hidden, as Elisha had the eyes of the servant opened to the army of angels.  They are definitely there, and I don’t know fully what their duty is but to be ready when the Lord calls them into action.  There is much wrong teaching and thinking regarding angels, they are not cute, but magnificent; they are not chubby little rascals, but tremendous warriors.  
    Peter had been shut up in prison, and not for the first time.  He was resting peacefully when the angel appeared telling him to ready himself to leave and also to take time to strap on his sandals.  Nothing could save him, but then God sent the angel and together they left the prison.

         “When they were past the first and the second guard posts, they came to the iron gate that leads to the city, which opened to them of its own accord; and they went out and went down one street, and immediately the angel departed from him.”
                   –Acts 12:10 (NKJV)

Prison cells are no match for God.  You can shut out the world, friends, family members, but there is no power that can shut the angels out.
    The angel escorted Peter out of the prison and down a street then “departed.”  There could be many reasons for the angel to depart, but here it left because his work was accomplished.  There was no more need for the angel, Peter could find his own way now.  He did not need protection, he did not need a further miracle.  One thing that is vital to remember, that even though the angel departed God was still there.
    Often we ask for miracles when none is needed.  Sometimes we want to bask in the miracle when God wants us to be on our way down the street.  He will provide the miracles if He deems the miracle is necessary.  “It [God’s dealing] means that in extraordinary difficulties we may reasonably look for extraordinary help…  But when the claimant need goes, so does the angel.  In the open street, under the common sky, do not expect miraculous intervention.  It was better for Peter’s manhood, and it is better for yours, that only the hour of the dungeon should bring that.  The angel departs, but the law of God abides.  The angel departs, but the love of Christ remains.” (George H. Morrison)
    Peter still had work remaining for him to do, and he could not do it from the prison cell, nor could he free himself.  The angel had to help.  However, do not expect an angel at every corner or in every problem.  “And if at every turn the angel met us and the vision of a dream enchanted us, we should lose heart and nerve and power for the struggle and be like the lotos-eaters in ignoble quietude.  The angel may do, but duty still remains.  The vision may disappear, but truth abides.” (Morrison).
    When the angel departs it is time for us to continue on down the street.  When the miracle has taken place and we are whole again, it is time to fulfill our duty.  We are not to become lazy in our faith expecting an angel at each intersection of life.  We are to walk through this life in the power of the Holy Spirit and if needed, God will send an angel to help, but do not expect it to stay.
    One final word, miracles are gifts of God.  They are not performed by the majesty of an angel.  The angel is empowered by God to fulfill a duty just as we are empowered by God for duty.  Do not give too much credit to the activity of angels, yet do not discount their activity either.  The key–trust in God!  If an angel is needed He will send one.