New Year

You will eat the old grain of the previous year and will clear out the old to make room for the new. (Lev. 26:10)

The larger context of this verse is blessings on Israel for faithfulness to God, but as 21st century Christians we can draw secondary application from a promise made to God’s chosen people.
1. Faithfull service to God provides not only sustainment for the current year but also the next.
2. God’s blessings are not limited by time.
3. Past blessings provide the ground work for current and future blessings.
4. With a view to the greater context of this chapter blessings result from faithfulness and cursing from unfaithfulness.
5. Faithfulness to God on our part results in God’s provision for our needs, not necessarily our wants.
6. Faithfulness on our part results in the using of past blessings with a view to the promise of future provision.
7. Our challenge is to clear out the old to make room for the new.
Have a blessed new year.

Already Gone

If you have not read the book, you should.  The book that I am talking about is “Already Gone” by Ken Ham and Britt Beemer.  You may know of Ken Ham, he is the Answers in Genesis guy.  Well he commissioned a study of 20 something's who had stopped going to church and Britt Beemer is the guy who conducted the study, the book details the results. 

There were two results that I found very surprising. 

1.  61% of those no longer attending church regularly attended Sunday School as teens.  these 61% were more likely to not believe the bible, more likely to accept premarital sex and more likely to accept homosexuality as being normal than those who did not attend Sunday School.  The reasons behind this were many but the top two were that the bible had been taught as a story and not as fact, and that the Sunday School teachers were unable to answer questions like how did Noah get all of the animals onto the ark.  The kids were being told what to believe but not why. 

2.  Music has replaced the teaching of the Word of God in church services.  If any teaching was being given at all it was in the form of fluffy feel good, I’m ok you’re ok kind of junk.  People want to know that the Word of God is relevant.  If all that the preacher is giving is a pep talk or every service is another sermon telling the saved how to get saved, then you are just wasting their time, and yours.   

The Word of God contains the wisdom of the wise.  It is alive and powerful sharper than a two edged sword and it will change lives, but this only happens if it is taught.