ISDAMan
06-03-00, 01:34 AM
Ecclesiastes 4
I would like to apologize for past typing errors. I'm trying to get better at that. It's not quite like typing code wherein you can quickly test it to see if it works. I’m just so pressed for time at times; even considering the time I might spend earlier in the week working on these, I’m probably a bit lack luster in the last reading department. I’ll do better ;-).
Well, this weeks FNS is going to be very very good. In fact, it hits quite close to home for me. Among other issues, we’ll be looking at standing your ground. I know that in two very big ways in my life recently, I have been challenged in this very way. In the first, I wanted to run. Yes, that’s right. The big bad former U.S. Marine didn’t want to hold his ground. In the second, I wanted too much to fight and then I simply wanted to let it go when the situation actually required much more attention. You see. The first was not a direct challenge to test my strength or manhood. I believe God wanted me to learn to stand tall even in the midst of shame, doubt, and embarrassment (plus some other emotions men don’t normally admit to). In the other, it’s more obvious that He had a group plan in my travail. Stay the course and you might find that all those around you reap the rewards of just a tiny bit of faithfulness on your part. Sometimes, all God is waiting for, to bless others, is your obedience to Him. It often requires you to stand strong in an awkward or bad situation. Running is not the answer (though you may never see the favorable outcome you hope for), forgiveness is grace, and wise acceptance only comes by way of repentance. So, there’ll be quite a bit here. Let’s get to it.
<FONT COLOR=”BLUE”>1 Again I observed all the oppression that takes place in our world. I saw the tears of the oppressed, with no one to comfort them. The oppressors have great power, and the victims are helpless. 2 So I concluded that the dead are better off than the living. 3 And most fortunate of all are those who were never born. For they have never seen all the evil that is done in our world.</FONT>
It’s still obvious that the writer has got the blues and is not fully grasping that all that is going on in the world is under the control of God. We do know that he does have the head knowledge though. Another thing that we know is that the oppressed have a place with God when they turn to Him. The other great thing that the writer never seemed to take into account (He’s too busy in his pity party.) is the fact that he, himself, could have been a comforter to the oppressed. He and we could have done our parts to make life worth living to someone else. Still, we do not see this either. Why is that? It’s obvious! Our perspectives are skewed. Instead of claiming the authority given of God to be salt and light to the world, we have this sad habit of looking at the circumstances around us and thinking that that’s all there is to it. Life is not worth living with less affluence. This marriage can’t be saved after all of this. If this relationship goes south, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m never going to get out from under all of this debt. I’m too fat to work out. People will laugh at me. I’ll never forgive him for that. Life’s just not worth living anymore without this person. I’m too ashamed to go on. I can’t face that person again. It goes on and on. It’s all the same. No matter what the excuse, it just boils down to one thing. It’s looking at your circumstances as being the end all and be all of your life. Sure, there are matters of life that we are locked into. Still, God never intended for us to be controlled by these situations. Do they help to mold us and guide our actions? Of course they do. Do we have the opportunity to overcome? You bet we do!!!! We are not without power. Now, I’m as guilty of this as the next guy. I’m no different from my fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ. My view is limited at times too. I’ll tell you this. We have to remember the promise of Jesus. He told us that He would be sending a comforter. We do have comfort! Not only that, that comforter, if you have really surrendered your life to Christ, lives in you and is the very Holy Spirit of the Living God we serve. How much more comfort do you need? What more power can there be to overcome your circumstances? When we do like the writer and let our circumstances bring doubt and confusion, it is our perspectives that are skewed. Our lives and life in general is not screwed up or against us. It is important to lean more to trust God. He might never give you what you want, expect, or think is fair. Still, if you will trust Him, He WILL get you through. I can tell just from the experience, wherein I wanted to run, I learned that God takes us out of our comfort zones at times to help refine us. He has to turn up the heat to remove the impurities from His fine Gold. It’s great when it’s all done. While it’s going on, it hurts. I don’t like wanting to give up and run. That’s just not what I ever really would have believed to be in my nature. Still, God knew better and He made sure to bring that impurity to the surface. He hit me in the fear I didn’t know or wouldn’t admit I had. The writer of this book, again, probable Solomon, was undergoing a similar time of travail. The circumstances were different. It’s all the same though. He needed to come to a point wherein he could realize that he needed to trust God. He needed to find his comfort in God when out of his comfort zone. We know that he was still trying to trust in filling his own fleshly lusts. I know that there’s lot’s of you out there that would say things like, “Yeah! But, you don’t know my situation! My life is bad! My money is gone. There’s no love in my life. I’m addicted to drugs. I’m caught up in an immoral lifestyle. No one would want me if they really knew me. Even my dog ran away. How can I trust God?” Well, if your life is that bad, what else have you got to loose?!?!?!? God’s not going to flinch if you hold Him up to His Word. You can't surprise Him. He keeps all that we know as reality operating from sunup to sundown every day. He can handle your situation too. I know it’s hard to trust God but our God is a mighty God!!! The heat God applies to your life will stir up your emotions. Feeling strange and even having emotions that run all over the place is normal. I’ll also tell you that you will not last alone. Gods didn’t make us Brothers and Sisters so we could all be a bunch of loners. HE wants and expects us to join together. Apply the flame of a blowtorch to a lump of gold and it will run all over the place until it is misshapen and completely deformed and the heat of that torch can no longer reach the entirety of the body of gold. That lump of gold needs to be contained by bounds that will guide its shape during the heating. I tell you no lie Christian. When you feel the heat of God’s torch in your life, don’t look for the first chance to run. Look for the boundaries. Seek to know the limits that God is placing upon you development. How do you do this? First , you pray and thank God first for all that He is doing in your life even though you don’t understand. Second, you study His Word every chance you get. He’s told us His thoughts on life. How are you going to know if you don’t read and study His Word every day? Third, seek the advice of other <U>mature</U> Christians. Get into Bible study groups. Stay in church whenever the doors are open! Seek after the things of God!!! Soon, God will have you set until the next time He is ready to refine you. Take advantage of those hard times that come. Remember, Jesus was not unsure on the matter. He knew that the world would defiantly hate you. There was no “if trials come”. It was “when”. Remember this, if you recall nothing else from this FNS. No one who ever trusted God ever went to Hell. Read Palms 16. You’ll like it!
<FONT COLOR=”BLUE”>4 Then I observed that most people are motivated to success by their envy of their neighbors. But this, too, is meaningless, like chasing the wind. 5 Foolish people refuse to work and almost starve. 6 They feel it is better to be lazy and barely survive than to work hard, especially when in the long run everything is so futile.</FONT>
What a wonderful example of skewed vision this is. We just learned in the past Romans coverage of the FNS that God is the measuring stick by which we should judge ourselves. We’ve even seen that in this current set. Never the less, we are so stuck on what can best be called affluenza. It’s a sickness wherein the afflicted are driven insane by the lust and envy of what their neighbors have. Affluenza/Greed is a common thread among everyone that buys a BMW and sends their child off to community college. It causes fathers to spend less that three ours a week with their children and look at a few minutes of physical pleasure with their wives as being some magical brand of quality time. It fills the shops on Sunday afternoons, the taverns on Sunday night, and the psychiatrists couches on Monday morning. There’s no one above affliction. From the White House to the city slum, the all-invasive desire to have more because it is known that someone else has more has ruined a tragic mass of lives. Competition is not wrong. Greed is though. Not knowing when to, or simply not desiring to stop and give thanks to God for what He has given is very wrong. How is it that when times are tough, we say, “God’s going to do this or that in my life. I’ve been praying about it.”, and, when God does get it done for us, we say, "Look at all that I have done.", and, "I still need to do more."? Where is the awareness of what God has done? God makes it to rain on the just and the unjust alike. How are we somehow better? Go back, in your minds, to that long conversation God had with Job. Think on this as we will be picking up next week in FNS Ecclesiastes 4 Part 2.
Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
-- Galatians 6:2
ISDAMan
[This message has been edited by ISDAMan (edited June 02, 2000).]
I would like to apologize for past typing errors. I'm trying to get better at that. It's not quite like typing code wherein you can quickly test it to see if it works. I’m just so pressed for time at times; even considering the time I might spend earlier in the week working on these, I’m probably a bit lack luster in the last reading department. I’ll do better ;-).
Well, this weeks FNS is going to be very very good. In fact, it hits quite close to home for me. Among other issues, we’ll be looking at standing your ground. I know that in two very big ways in my life recently, I have been challenged in this very way. In the first, I wanted to run. Yes, that’s right. The big bad former U.S. Marine didn’t want to hold his ground. In the second, I wanted too much to fight and then I simply wanted to let it go when the situation actually required much more attention. You see. The first was not a direct challenge to test my strength or manhood. I believe God wanted me to learn to stand tall even in the midst of shame, doubt, and embarrassment (plus some other emotions men don’t normally admit to). In the other, it’s more obvious that He had a group plan in my travail. Stay the course and you might find that all those around you reap the rewards of just a tiny bit of faithfulness on your part. Sometimes, all God is waiting for, to bless others, is your obedience to Him. It often requires you to stand strong in an awkward or bad situation. Running is not the answer (though you may never see the favorable outcome you hope for), forgiveness is grace, and wise acceptance only comes by way of repentance. So, there’ll be quite a bit here. Let’s get to it.
<FONT COLOR=”BLUE”>1 Again I observed all the oppression that takes place in our world. I saw the tears of the oppressed, with no one to comfort them. The oppressors have great power, and the victims are helpless. 2 So I concluded that the dead are better off than the living. 3 And most fortunate of all are those who were never born. For they have never seen all the evil that is done in our world.</FONT>
It’s still obvious that the writer has got the blues and is not fully grasping that all that is going on in the world is under the control of God. We do know that he does have the head knowledge though. Another thing that we know is that the oppressed have a place with God when they turn to Him. The other great thing that the writer never seemed to take into account (He’s too busy in his pity party.) is the fact that he, himself, could have been a comforter to the oppressed. He and we could have done our parts to make life worth living to someone else. Still, we do not see this either. Why is that? It’s obvious! Our perspectives are skewed. Instead of claiming the authority given of God to be salt and light to the world, we have this sad habit of looking at the circumstances around us and thinking that that’s all there is to it. Life is not worth living with less affluence. This marriage can’t be saved after all of this. If this relationship goes south, I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m never going to get out from under all of this debt. I’m too fat to work out. People will laugh at me. I’ll never forgive him for that. Life’s just not worth living anymore without this person. I’m too ashamed to go on. I can’t face that person again. It goes on and on. It’s all the same. No matter what the excuse, it just boils down to one thing. It’s looking at your circumstances as being the end all and be all of your life. Sure, there are matters of life that we are locked into. Still, God never intended for us to be controlled by these situations. Do they help to mold us and guide our actions? Of course they do. Do we have the opportunity to overcome? You bet we do!!!! We are not without power. Now, I’m as guilty of this as the next guy. I’m no different from my fellow Brothers and Sisters in Christ. My view is limited at times too. I’ll tell you this. We have to remember the promise of Jesus. He told us that He would be sending a comforter. We do have comfort! Not only that, that comforter, if you have really surrendered your life to Christ, lives in you and is the very Holy Spirit of the Living God we serve. How much more comfort do you need? What more power can there be to overcome your circumstances? When we do like the writer and let our circumstances bring doubt and confusion, it is our perspectives that are skewed. Our lives and life in general is not screwed up or against us. It is important to lean more to trust God. He might never give you what you want, expect, or think is fair. Still, if you will trust Him, He WILL get you through. I can tell just from the experience, wherein I wanted to run, I learned that God takes us out of our comfort zones at times to help refine us. He has to turn up the heat to remove the impurities from His fine Gold. It’s great when it’s all done. While it’s going on, it hurts. I don’t like wanting to give up and run. That’s just not what I ever really would have believed to be in my nature. Still, God knew better and He made sure to bring that impurity to the surface. He hit me in the fear I didn’t know or wouldn’t admit I had. The writer of this book, again, probable Solomon, was undergoing a similar time of travail. The circumstances were different. It’s all the same though. He needed to come to a point wherein he could realize that he needed to trust God. He needed to find his comfort in God when out of his comfort zone. We know that he was still trying to trust in filling his own fleshly lusts. I know that there’s lot’s of you out there that would say things like, “Yeah! But, you don’t know my situation! My life is bad! My money is gone. There’s no love in my life. I’m addicted to drugs. I’m caught up in an immoral lifestyle. No one would want me if they really knew me. Even my dog ran away. How can I trust God?” Well, if your life is that bad, what else have you got to loose?!?!?!? God’s not going to flinch if you hold Him up to His Word. You can't surprise Him. He keeps all that we know as reality operating from sunup to sundown every day. He can handle your situation too. I know it’s hard to trust God but our God is a mighty God!!! The heat God applies to your life will stir up your emotions. Feeling strange and even having emotions that run all over the place is normal. I’ll also tell you that you will not last alone. Gods didn’t make us Brothers and Sisters so we could all be a bunch of loners. HE wants and expects us to join together. Apply the flame of a blowtorch to a lump of gold and it will run all over the place until it is misshapen and completely deformed and the heat of that torch can no longer reach the entirety of the body of gold. That lump of gold needs to be contained by bounds that will guide its shape during the heating. I tell you no lie Christian. When you feel the heat of God’s torch in your life, don’t look for the first chance to run. Look for the boundaries. Seek to know the limits that God is placing upon you development. How do you do this? First , you pray and thank God first for all that He is doing in your life even though you don’t understand. Second, you study His Word every chance you get. He’s told us His thoughts on life. How are you going to know if you don’t read and study His Word every day? Third, seek the advice of other <U>mature</U> Christians. Get into Bible study groups. Stay in church whenever the doors are open! Seek after the things of God!!! Soon, God will have you set until the next time He is ready to refine you. Take advantage of those hard times that come. Remember, Jesus was not unsure on the matter. He knew that the world would defiantly hate you. There was no “if trials come”. It was “when”. Remember this, if you recall nothing else from this FNS. No one who ever trusted God ever went to Hell. Read Palms 16. You’ll like it!
<FONT COLOR=”BLUE”>4 Then I observed that most people are motivated to success by their envy of their neighbors. But this, too, is meaningless, like chasing the wind. 5 Foolish people refuse to work and almost starve. 6 They feel it is better to be lazy and barely survive than to work hard, especially when in the long run everything is so futile.</FONT>
What a wonderful example of skewed vision this is. We just learned in the past Romans coverage of the FNS that God is the measuring stick by which we should judge ourselves. We’ve even seen that in this current set. Never the less, we are so stuck on what can best be called affluenza. It’s a sickness wherein the afflicted are driven insane by the lust and envy of what their neighbors have. Affluenza/Greed is a common thread among everyone that buys a BMW and sends their child off to community college. It causes fathers to spend less that three ours a week with their children and look at a few minutes of physical pleasure with their wives as being some magical brand of quality time. It fills the shops on Sunday afternoons, the taverns on Sunday night, and the psychiatrists couches on Monday morning. There’s no one above affliction. From the White House to the city slum, the all-invasive desire to have more because it is known that someone else has more has ruined a tragic mass of lives. Competition is not wrong. Greed is though. Not knowing when to, or simply not desiring to stop and give thanks to God for what He has given is very wrong. How is it that when times are tough, we say, “God’s going to do this or that in my life. I’ve been praying about it.”, and, when God does get it done for us, we say, "Look at all that I have done.", and, "I still need to do more."? Where is the awareness of what God has done? God makes it to rain on the just and the unjust alike. How are we somehow better? Go back, in your minds, to that long conversation God had with Job. Think on this as we will be picking up next week in FNS Ecclesiastes 4 Part 2.
Carry each other's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.
-- Galatians 6:2
ISDAMan
[This message has been edited by ISDAMan (edited June 02, 2000).]