Coming Again

News Flash! News Flash!

Jesus is coming again. He tells us that in John 14, Acts 1, I Thessalonians 4 and many other places (think Revelation). Now, prophecy and eschatology are two of my weakest points in biblical studies. Some day I will put more labor into that area, but it just hasn't happened yet. I just thought it important to once again bring it up, because I too often am caught up in this life and this flesh. The things which are seen are temporal, the things which are not seen are eternal.

Here's what I do know. This temporal world will be coming to an end, and it will be a spectacular ending. But even if Jesus does not come back for 1,000 years... He is still coming back. One of the reasons I think Jesus tells us that we won't know the day nor the hour is so that when we have these date-setters, which come and go (including their dates), we wouldn't lose faith. It would be easy to think that since there were 88 reasons that the Lord was coming back in '88, and that didn't happen, it must be that the Bible is wrong. But that just is not the case. He is not slack concerning His promise.

Anyway, I love how Josh Merriman closes his prayers frequently: "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."

Just a thought

Great Expectations

It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man...

That's a good lesson to remember when we start to develop expectations from man. I mean most of you were probably expecting a post from me earlier than right now, but to demonstrate my point I have held off until now... Um, no, really... I was... or, I suppose it's possible that I just didn't have anything in my mind worth writing about (and some of you would argue that I still don't!). I know there are things that we rely on man for, and I don't know if it'd be possible to ever get away from that, but the more we depend on man, the more we should be ready for disappointment.

But God is faithful... I'm glad that He never changes, and that His word is true from the beginning, and that all that He has said can be depended and relied upon. Faith comes by hearing of the word of God. I believe that's true because the more we hear it and practice it in our lives, the more we experience its truth. The more we hear of man and examine what man says... the more flawed we realize that they/we are.

Anyway, just a late thought...

Searching...

So, my blog is on the Internet, in case any of you didn't realize that. That means that Google knows about my blog, and they have done their thing to index what I've written. That means that if somebody searches on Google for certain things, they may come across my blog. Ends up that people do that fairly regularly, to my surprise. Anyway, today I wanted to share some of the Search queries that were made that brought people to my blog. That is, people typed in the following phrases on Google, and ended up here. In no particular order:

-- hindsey blog
that makes sense

-- john piper
that search actually came to my blog twice. I wonder if they liked what I wrote?

-- kjv only
I can see that (2 times)

-- 5 beautiful thoughts about Jesus
um, Ok! how 'beautiful' I write

-- ancient greek music
did I write on that? I remember music, but...

-- commit your way unto the Lord
I remember that post (came in 2 times, a little differently)

-- coche means pig
while, that is true in Spanish in Guatemala, and I did write that on my blog once, I just wonder why someone would search it!

-- acknowledging God
That was when I attempted to explain what it means to "in all thy ways acknowledge him." It was the same post as the one about committing your way unto the Lord.

-- how to pray in Jesus name
This one is interesting to me. I have 11 different searches for that phrase, or something like it that came to my blog. That means one of two things to me. Either there is not much written on the Internet about it, or lots of people want to know about it and aren't totally satisfied with what they read on it. Here's what I wrote.

-- what is worldliness?
That was a fun one...

-- marriage + "losing friends"
I don't really want to comment on that one.

-- mike barone "missionary to italy"
This one actually was the most commonly searched term to come to my blog. My real question is: Which one of you keeps typing in that to come to my blog? Why don't you just bookmark it?

-- edify the saints
See, my blog is edifying! Google says so!

And Lastly...

-- yourfortunerevealed.com
Some of you remember when my ads displayed some Fortune Telling links, etc. While I did not endorse the ads, I did endorse you clicking on the ads from my site. Speaking of which, maybe it's time to have another "heresy hunt" from my site... If you don't know the rules, I'm not allowed to tell you.

Just a thought...

An angel and promised victory... What could be better?

I was preparing for my Home Bible Study on Friday and came across Exodus 33:1-3, where the Bible says, "And the LORD said unto Moses, Depart, and go up hence, thou and the people which thou hast brought up out of the land of Egypt, unto the land which I sware unto Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, saying, Unto thy seed will I give it: And I will send an angel before thee; and I will drive out the Canaanite, the Amorite, and the Hittite, and the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite: Unto a land flowing with milk and honey:..."

Wow, imagine that, having the promise that God would send an angel to lead us into battle... to even have the promise from God that He will drive out our enemies from before us! What an awesome promise. Who wouldn't want that? I mean, what could be better!?

Well, then I kept reading and it says, "... for I will not go up in the midst of thee; for thou art a stiffnecked people: lest I consume thee in the way. And when the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned..."

How often are we satisfied with simply seeing God's work - even seeing it in a miraculous way. I think from this passage we can learn something: Just because God is working, and even working to accomplish the goals that we are looking to accomplish, it does not mean that God is "with" us, or that we are abiding in Christ. The people wanted to go into the promised land, they wanted the enemies to be defeated. God told them that He would accomplish that... but He was not going to be with them.

Moses is one of my favorite Bible characters. He goes on to say in that chapter, verse 15: "...If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence." Moses refuses to cross over into the promised land, even with the promise of an angel to go before them and the promise of victory over the enemies.

I can only imagine what the last part of chapter 33 and the beginning of chapter 34 were like. Moses begs God, he beseeches God to show him His glory, and God grants that request. He puts Moses in a clift of the rock, and passes before him... all because Moses did not want to continue his "Christian" walk without going in God's presence.

Oh, that we would all have the same desire as Moses. God, if you aren't with me, don't carry us up there. God, show me Your glory!

Let's be sure that even if God is working in our lives, that we are going through with it with His presence, in communion with Him.

Just a thought...™

Andy Hinds

I learned about prayer in church

I believe that God answers prayer... I do... I pray to God in "my closet" and have seen Him answer prayers before. I believe in it. However, I learned Sunday that I have imperfect faith.

At the end of the 2nd service, Pastor Grace gave an invitation for any lost in the room to respond to the message. After singing a verse or two, he broadened the scope of the invitation to anyone that needed prayer for something, whether it be physical in their lives, or in someone they knew, or maybe praying for someone that's lost, etc... He asked them to come forward and then he would pray for them all as a whole. Here are some of the thoughts that started going through my mind when Pastor began to open the invitation - and please forgive me for simply confessing my Phariseeism, I hope I don't lose too many readers over this.

- "Boy, I wonder who is going to go forward because they think their problems are some 'super-problems'..."
- "I wonder who will go forward so that the church will feel bad for them"
- "I wouldn't ever go up, so that people would never think those things about me..."

I think you get the point. I was questioning the motives of everyone that was going to be going up (Pastor hadn't even finished what he was saying, so nobody had moved yet.) And because I wouldn't want to ever look like "those people" I would never go up myself.

Then I got floored. As soon as Pastor finished talking about it, without an instant of hesitation, Marcia Ferris moves out of her seat and goes to the front (along with many others). I thought for a second:

- "Boy, Mrs. Ferris' problems are real 'super-problems.'"
- "Mrs. Ferris isn't going to the front for people to see her and feel bad for her."
- "Mrs. Ferris isn't too concerned about what people were thinking about her right then."

So, I began to ask myself why she moved that quick to go forward. That's when I realized that Mrs. Ferris actually believes in prayer. She believes in the God that answers prayer. She did not hesitate for one second, because as soon as our Pastor volunteered to offer up a prayer for anybody, she knew she wanted to be a part of that - why? because she knows that prayer is real - that God is real.

Yeah, I pray... I've seen God answer my prayers... but I still don't believe in prayer like Mrs. Ferris. Hopefully, I will be more intent on praying and praying fervently. Thanks, Mrs. Ferris for teaching me a lesson at church (...we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses). I may not remember the message for a long time, but I will remember what I learned at church yesterday.

Just a thought...

Andy Hinds