“LIVING BY PATHETIC DECISIONS OR OVERCOMING BY DIVINE PROMISES?”
BY: J.FARRELL FISHER, SEPTEMBER 6-7, 2018
There was a quite-shocking news’ release on my computer recently from Billy Graham Evangelistic Association saying, “Nearly 20 million Americans struggle with depression. Over 42,000 commit suicide each year.” It also highlighted Psalm 34:18 (ESV), “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.” Have you witnessed the brokenhearted and the crushed in spirit without any concern, compassion, or care for, yes, the “needy” right in front of you, or next door?
It was a heart-breaking news’ release, but then I read a Sarah Palin statement on, what at the time under ‘Obamacare’, she quoted that 21,904 people had DIED on waiting lists! And you’re certainly challenged by ‘life desperation’ in many – most unaware of God’s presence, God’s help, God’s ministry, God’s Son, yes, sent by the Father as life’s Savior and Lord, a life’s needy ‘the GREAT PHYSICIAN’, and life’s conqueror over sin, over sickness, over death, over world domination, that is godless and heavily injures body, soul, and spirit, by blindness to Satanic interference!!
“Living by pathetic decisions”? Just consider the ‘atheistic community’ world-wide or even locally around you! “There is no god!”, and so they “choose” to willfully live in the choice of ‘the suicide of the soul’, closing the door of heart and mind on the Truth of Biblical Hope in Christ!
It was Sir Francis Bacon, in his writing, “Essays: Of Atheism” XVI, who wrote, “A little philosophy inclines a man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy brings men’s minds to religion”, but, sadly, religions as well as man’s philosophies, often are blinding men rather than opening their eyes, minds, and hearts to Christ Jesus’ KNOCK on their hearts’ door!
O.A. Battista, in his writing, “Power To Influence People”, (copyrighted in 1959 by him), says: “An atheist is a man who looks through a telescope and tries to explain what he can’t see.” So true! Spiritual blindness in atheism is a deadly disease, AND a deadly ‘dis-ease’ living one stranded on a ‘sinking ship’!
In my early days, I lived with my grandparents because my mother divorced my father then took me to live with them while, for a number of years she lived a care-free, Christ-less life, strapped in her ‘flesh nature’! I still praise God at 82 years of age because my grandparents and my mother’s two sisters ‘blessed me spiritually’ from my three years of age until at about twelve years of age when my mother married Frank Callaway who became my step-dad! (In all my years of life my dad never came to see me, never –but I’d travel 30 miles to his parents’ home, and he’d drop by or I’d go to his office.) But my mother’s parents, my grandparents and my two aunts, one just two years older than me and the other about six years older, basically, ‘discipled’ me faithfully! Some, in a situation like mine, often ‘choose’ to “turn away from God” because, how could He allow such irreverence and shunning of His eternal purpose in every life? But, thank God, though without mother and father, I WAS BLESSED! I didn’t turn to ‘atheism’ because I heard, saw, witnessed, believed in, and trusted the “Lived-Out-Trust-in The Loving Lord and Savior” through the family and our local church blessed with a large number of true disciples who, yes, also nurtured me in the faith!!
In Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Fears in Solitude”, he wrote: “Forth from his dark and lonely hiding place, (Portentious sight!) the ‘owlet’ Atheism, Sailing on obscene wings athwart the noon, Drops his blue-fringed lids, and holds them close, And hooting at the glorious sun in Heaven, Cries out, “Where is it?”
I love what Alexander Pope once said! “Atheists put on a false courage in the midst of their darkness and misapprehensions, like children who, when they fear to go in the dark, will sing or whistle to keep up their courage.”
Worldly intelligence often so deceives ‘unbelievers’, and at times ‘intelligent mind-believers’, that, all of a sudden, they think, “There is no God!’, opening the false door to one’s ‘self’ as the “best god I know”, and willfully ‘lie’ to themselves, “There is no god!”, choosing, yes, a godless life or a godless pretense! Others catch the “dis-ease” of recognizing their need of God, but unwilling to submit to His commands, they find it easier, though deathly, to determine for themselves, “I don’t need YOUR GOD!”
There is a spiritual disease called ‘atheism’ that is a repressed ‘religion’ that captures some hearts and minds, but has not, cannot, will not ever produce the miracle of new lives, new hearts, new minds, recognizing only ‘human intent of honoring ‘any god’ by, at least, being ‘honest’(?) with themselves’, but opening the ‘door’ to eternal death! It was Mary Ann Vincent who once said: “An atheist’s most embarrassing moment is when he/she feels profoundly thankful for ‘something’, but can’t think of anybody (or anything) to thank for it.” So true!
And, guaranteed, there ARE, for some atheists, dark, dark, tragic, tough moments when they stop and think, “If God is real, would He be willing to help me when I need Him the most?”
Oh, and then there are the “agnostics”. The Random House Collegiate Dictionary of 1975, published in a Revised Edition, says of an ‘agnostic’, “a person who holds that the ultimate cause (God) and the essential nature of things (though real) are unknown and unknowable.” So, of course, the agnostic refuses to trust, relate to, submit to, or obey the One he/she has no desire to know, though He exists!
And, though, at times, many ‘agnostics’ are ‘intellectually wise’ in their worldly philosophies, their arrogance deceives them in thinking, “Though ‘God’ exists, He has no ‘genius’ about ‘fleshly creation in the human heart and mind’ but certainly His world, created by His Word, is sure beautiful! I can accept that!” ,but will deny “Amazing Grace, Love, Truth, and Mercy”, and especially ‘God in Christ’!”
Then, beyond what we’ve seen so far, there are still, yes, many, many people who are not atheists or agnostics, but individuals who have a ‘mental awareness of the reality of God’ but no desire to be reconciled to Him, be transformed by Him, or even consider that He could and would, having “birthed them into an eternal spiritual relationship”, be used by Him to extend His Kingdom, express His love through them, and demonstrate through them His Power! But…they willfully say, ‘no; there is no God’, He ‘knocks’, but they refuse to open the door of their minds and hearts because they are content with their worldly wisdom, their fleshly ambitions, and their own entertainment, yes, without any need of Calvary’s Savior, Lord, and Master of eternal life and blessing!
Also there are many in our highly educated, self-centered world, bound by that ‘world philosophy’, by ‘Satanic deceit’, and by the “I do it ‘my way’,” godless, brain-dead and heart-diseased, state of only inward allegiance and ‘self-fulfillment’, that they have no time to even consider a relationship with a loving, merciful and caring God! That’s like Napoleon Bonaparte who once said, “You think you are too intelligent to believe in God. –I am not like you.- Not every one who wishes to be is an atheist,” denying His desire to be Lord over your life as you ‘fend’ for yourself, denying Him His eternal desire to be Lord, Savior, Master, or Ruler in and over your life, turning ‘existence’ into Holy Presence!
Are YOU “living under” the pretense of your thoughts, your turning, and your ‘self-inflicted’ torture of “Godless living”? Thomas Carlyle once said, “There is but one thing without honor, smitten with eternal barrenness, inability to do or to be, and that is unbelief. He who believes nothing, who believes only the show of things, is not in relation with nature and fact at all”, like, “The fool has said in his heart, ‘There is no God’!” So true!
Oh, and then there is the “later-crowd”, the “sometime, but, ‘not-now-crowd’” who ‘believe’ but not to the point of trust or surrender or allegiance to His “Amazing Grace”!!
Oh, and also, there IS the “wilted-flower-‘fan’” that Alfred Lord Tennyson described in his writing, “Flower in the Crannied Wall” theme: “Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower – but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is.” Also, so true!
BUT, also, there IS the spiritual tragedy of the fallen man easily distracted by the worldly influences, by the, yes, demonic distractions and devilish influences, AND by that ‘all-out-allegiance to satisfy one’s sin-nature and self-centered allegiances’! THEY ALL ARE EXTREMELY POWERFUL, BLINDING, AND EFFICIENT IN THEIR FRAMES OF REFERENCE!! In 1 Corinthians 13:11 Paul wrote, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” That was Paul, but certainly there are young children who latch on to Holy God, and they won’t let go! Not all, but some!
I read a small article by Eric Metaxes and Stan Guthrie on my computer this morning entitled, “Beware of Apatheism” that I found so appropriate for this message. It said: “With apologies to Richard Dawkins, the New Atheists are old news. But we’ve got a bigger problem. You remember them, don’t you? Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Bennett, and Sam Harris?
These so-called “New Atheists” drew crowds with their bombastic and occasionally clever attacks on God and theism. For a while their books were best sellers, “The God Delusion,” “God Is Not Great,” for example. But as atheist and evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson recently wrote, “The world appears to be tiring of the New Atheism movement…
However, that’s not necessarily good news. Writing in The Public Discourse, Paul Rowan Brian and Ben Sixsmith warn of something even more insidious than atheism. APATHEISM – that is, answering the “God question” with a shoulder shrug and a calm, “Whatever.” Again, “Whatever,” Brian and Sixsmith write, “With roots in the practical atheism and deism of the Enlightment, ‘apatheism’ is embodied in French philosopher Denis Diderot’s famous remark that ‘it is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley, but to believe or not believe in God is not important at all.”
They cite K. Robert Beshears of Southern Baptist Seminary, who says the West suffers from an “unholy trinity of apatheism”: a lack of ‘reason’ to believe, supposedly because of science; a lack of ‘motivation’ to believe, because someone else will worry about it, and a lack of ‘will’ to believe, because religion “is just too much drama.”
And one WONDERS: “How stupid, blind, and spiritually ignorant has ‘fallen mankind’ stooped to?” BUT…THERE IS HOPE!! In Hebrews 12:1-9 God’s Holy Word challenges us all! It says: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin which SO EASILY BESETS US, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
For consider Him, that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest you be wearied and faint in your minds. You have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks unto you as children, My son, despise not you the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you are rebuked by Him.
For WHOM the Lord loves he chastens, and scourges every son whom He receives. IF you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father never chastens?
But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then you are bastards (illegitimate), and not sons. Furthermore we have had our fathers of our ‘flesh’ who corrected us, and we gave them reverence; shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?” GOOD QUESTION!
I recently went back to re-examine Edwin Louis Cole’s book, “Maximized Manhood”, and I had to wonder, once again, “is that theme the opposite of “death to self in exchange for Christ’s Resurrection Presence after true repentance and faith in His finished work at the Cross and the empty tomb”, encouraging ‘best effort’ in place of “crucified with Christ, buried, then raised in the “newness of His Presence”?
ARE YOU: “Living by pathetic decisions”? Examine Luke 8:4-18!! And when much people were gathered together, and were come to Him out of every city, He spoke by a parable: “A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell by the wayside; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.
And some fell down upon a rock; and as soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. (Moisture of the Holy Spirit?). And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it.
And others fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. When He had said these things, He cried out, ‘Hear that has ears to hear, let him hear.’ His disciples asked Him, saying, ‘What might this parable be?’ He said, “Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.
Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the wayside are they that hear; then comes the devil, and takes away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved. They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away. And that which fell among thorns are they, which, when they have heard, go forth, and are choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection.
But that on the good ground are they, which in an honest and good heart, having heard the word, keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience. No man, when he has lighted a candle, covers it with a vessel, or puts it under a bed; but sets it on a candlestick, that they which enter in may see the light.
For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither anything hid, that shall not be known and come abroad. Take heed therefore how YOU hear; for whosoever has, to him shall be given; and whosoever has not, from him shall be taken that which he seems to have.”
What’s the Question of this very moment? Are YOU “Living by Pathetic Decisions OR Are YOU Overcoming by Divine Promises?" A few words I recently wrote that states this: “I once was lost, but now I’m found; I once was blind, but now I see; I once was dirty in the garment of sin, but now I’ve been cleansed by the Blood of the Lamb.
Darkness prevailed, and then came the Light; darkness distressed, and the Light offered “Rest”; darkness ‘tired’, but the Spirit “inspired” LIFE IN THE LORD that never retires!
Darkness’ ease is a deadly disease, but, the Great Physician brings “Heaven’s Release”! Darkness’ author is the Satanic Liar, offering release to a ‘lesser lair’.
Darkness’ song is an off-key chord, eventually bringing a life that is bored; but Jesus comes to offer His Light to free you from ‘the cellar of devilish might’!”
The question now is: Are YOU still living by ‘pathetic decisions’ OR are YOU overcoming by Christ’s and the Word’s Divine Promises? I TELL YOU:
Darkness shakes like a massive hurricane at Jesus’ Presence, darkness moves deeper under the Devil’s own fear of the Light, darkness trembles at even the mention of Jesus’ Name, and darkness looks to its ‘author’ and ‘inventor’ of all its own fears, faults, and feelings! Oh, but then comes King Jesus, the Light that dispels darkness’ soiled agendas and then King Jesus turns on the “Eternal Light” of His ever abiding Presence.
Where is YOUR life planted? In Satan’s darkness or the Savior’s Light? P.P.Bliss wrote a hymn published in the old “Broadman Hymnal” in 1940 entitled: “The Light of the World Is Jesus”, saying: “The whole world was lost in the darkness of sin, The Light of the world is Jesus; Like sunshine at noonday His glory shone in, The Light of the world is Jesus.
No darkness have we who in Jesus abide, The Light of the world is Jesus; We walk in the Light when we follow our Guide, the Light of the world is Jesus.
You dwellers in darkness with sin-blinded eyes, The Light of the World is Jesus; Go, wash, at His bidding, and light will arise, The Light of the world is Jesus.
No need of the sunlight in Heaven we’re told, The Light of the world is Jesus; The Lamb is the Light in the city of Gold, The Light of the world is Jesus.”
Tell me! Your “residence” NOW and Eternally? In the ‘darkness’ of fallen humanity under the domination of Satan and his demons? OR, is it “residence” NOW and Eternally in “The Light of the Very Present, Presiding, Perfecting Light Of Christ Jesus”?