KJV COMPARED

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> Steven asks about this part:
> "but life and the Christian walk is not a simple matter!"
> 
> It is simply a matter of faith, was our God able or not able, to deliver
> his word to us written? Wasn't it said somewhere "believe only" (Luke
> 8:50)

Rather than address the issues, we play word games to dodge the real
matter.  Nonetheless, I'll illustrate what I was talking about by giving
a couple of fer'instances...

My pastor will on occasion preach a hard message.  He can choose to
ignore the leading of the Holy Ghost and find something easy that will
tickle our ears so the congregation can lean back and relax in our
comfy seats, or he can choose to obey God and preach the Word of God
with anointing and truth.

On the surface, the answer is of course very obvious, but somebody with
a pastor's heart realizes that it's not always real "fun" to preach the
hard message!

*ANOTHER FER'INSTANCE*

I leave my home at 8:30 A.M. on Sunday morning to start the bus route.
On my way to the bus barn, I see somebody in obvious distress, a
traveler who has been robbed, stripped, beaten, and left half-dead.

Do I stop to render assistance and make myself and two-dozen youth late
for church, or possibly even miss church altogher?  After all, Illinois
State Highway 130 is a well-traveled route, and surely somebody else
could stop.

The SIMPLE thing to do would be to head on to church -- I would have
plenty of religious tradition to back me up, as the priest and the
Levite in the parable of the good samaritan no doubt had pressing needs
to attend to [Luke 10:25-37].  Besides, who wants all that blood on
their nice clean suit and in their automobile?   But, IMO, the
Christian thing to do would be to stop and give the needed assistance.

BTW, please spare me the lectures about "you never know if it's a
setup to roll you."  Whenever I or my wife have been stuck on the side
of the road, it's always been people who look a bit on the shady side
who stop to help me out.

And of the times I've stopped to help out, I've been robbed and
murdered a total of zero times.  And even if I did come to an untimely
end as a result of a naive attempt to help out, so what?  Like I said,
it's SIMPLE to chicken out, while it's a challenge to be a blessing to
somebody you don't even know, possibly at the risk of personal
endangerment.  I guess I don't watch enough TV to make me paranoid.

  An aside: one nice Sunday afternoon, my wife's 1971 Valiant died in
  the middle of an intersection.  When she told me about what happened, I
  was INFURIATED at all the finely attired church-goers who drove by and
  watched my wife push this heap of rust off the road.

  Another circumstance: my Toyota van got stuck in a snow-filled ditch.
  Again, this was a Sunday afternoon, and this happened in a restaurant
  parking lot, filled with the religious after-church dinner crowd.  It
  was some gnarly hippie dude Samaritan smoking a cigarrette and with
  Budweiser cans rolling around in the back of his pickup truck who
  stopped and helped dig me out.  THIS IS NOT THE WAY THINGS SHOULD
  BE!!!!

*A FINAL EXAMPLE*

The Jews of the first century and of today have EVERYTHING codified.
>From the food they eat to its preparation, to the clothing they wear,
to what they can and cannot do on the sabbath:  it's all written down.
Sure, it's a huge set of rules, but there is no need to ever make any
moral decision -- it's already been done.

We have the Holy Ghost and the law of God has been inscribed into our
hearts.  We live not through a rule-book, but by faith -- by talking
with and being in communion with Jesus.  We must pray continually.  To
live by faith like this, rather than by a codified tradition, is not a
simple matter.

It's simple to go to church three or four or seven times a week, pay
tithes, to "talk right and spit white."  What is complex is being
justified not by our works, but by faith.  We have been redeemed by the
blood of Jesus Christ.  Paul talks about this being a stumbling block:
it's outrageous and unrealistic to believe that the blood of this
carpenter from Nazareth could wash sin's stain, yet it's the truth!

How can it be that my body is the Holy Place, the dwelling for the
shekinah glory of the Holy Ghost?  How can it be that, through the
sacrifice of Christ, we now can enter boldly to the throne of grace?
How can it be that we can talk to God, as Jesus Christ, God manifest in
the flesh, is also our one and only High Priest?

Richard "have I editorialized enough" Masoner
richardm@cd.com

P.S. nobody baptized over this last weekend, but we had a SHOUTIN'
service as Pastor Rogers preached an INCREDIBLE message about faith,
deliverance, and VICTORY in JESUS!  Hallelujah!  \o/