We’re at War

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.” Ephesians 6:11
 
Perhaps you, like me, have struggled with thoughts or actions that are contrary to the walk of a Christian and you are feeling guilty.  Do any of these ring a bell?

“If God knew what I did last night, He would never let me into heaven.”

“I accept that Christ died for me, but I can’t stop thinking about . . . . “

“It’s just one drink, I’ve been sober for almost a year, I should celebrate.”

“Nobody will know if only do it this one time, what could it hurt.”

“They need to suffer, look what they did to me 10 years ago.”

These are just a few examples of everyday thoughts and justifications for actions that are not necessarily in line with God’s righteousness for your life.  Do you think you are the only one being tempted by a worldly perspective?  Think again.  There are unrighteous thoughts entering the minds of every Christian that walks or has walked upon this earth.  You are not unique in that, and Satan is alive and well – and knows exactly which buttons to push.

We are weak.  Let’s face it, our minds and heart are vulnerable to the sensuous pleasures of this life.  Be it money, fame, sex, drugs, alcohol, power and authority or food we are all in the same state and must decide how to handle it when it happens.  It’s so easy to live for today and forego dealing with the potential long term implications of the decisions we make in life.   Based on our naturally sinful heart and mind we have a propensity to act upon our thoughts and desires without fully comprehending how it might hurt others or who might be affected.  Let me ask you, if your decision made the headlines of your local news or the Wall Street Journal would it impact others opinion of you as a follower of Jesus Christ?  Every decision you make is known to someone else, based on the actions you take after making that decision.  If that person or those individuals look at your decision and action, and then make an assessment of Jesus Christ based on their perception; you have to ask yourself if you have glorified God or created separation from God.

In Ephesians 6 Paul writes about putting on the armor of God, figuratively speaking that is (v. 14 – 17). 
 - The Belt of Truth
 - The Breastplate of Righteousness
 - Ready your feet with the Gospel of Peace
 - The Shield of Faith
 - The Helmet of Salvation
 - The Sword of the Spirit

The battle of the mind and the heart is a daily battle, regardless of your age or maturity in Christ.  Satan is not going to walk away and throw up his hands in defeat.  His intent is to manipulate your mind into thinking that you do not need God, and he uses the world’s view as his weapons.  This battle between God and Satan is very real and the final outcome has been recorded in the book of Revelation.  You can’t read and believe the Bible and then throw out the book of Revelation as fantasy.  If you believe that God created the world, Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt, David was a shepherd boy and became King, Daniel survived the lion’s den, Noah built an ark, God flooded the earth, John baptized in the river Jordan and Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, lived, died and rose again; then you can’t say that the book of Revelation is not going to come to fruition.  There will be a judgment day and there will be a new heaven and a new earth, just as is recorded in the Good Book.

When the enemy attacks each day, you need to stand firm in the foundation of God’s love, His grace and His promise of eternity.  You will fail, we all do; but in that failing you must realize that God’s grace is unchanging and His redemption remains true despite our shortcomings.  Take your weakness to the Lord in prayer and ask for His help when you are weak.  He is your Lord and His word is your weapon.  Only you can decide on how you want to use it – either as a prop sitting on your bookshelf or night stand, or as a tool to take on the daily challenges you will face.  As for me, I choose the latter.  This doesn’t make me perfect or better, it just makes me prepared.





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Everything from Nothing

“Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes.”  Ephesians 6:11

 

Those of you who have followed me for some time know that I am involved in a ministry called RDOF (Rational Defence of Faith) with an awesome man, Daryl Youngblood.  In this ministry Daryl provides very practical information for the debate between Atheism and Christianity from a scientific point of view.  His father was a scientist, and Daryl is steep in knowledge and wisdom in the scientific field. 

Today, I’d like to share an excerpt from one of Daryl’s RDOF events, title “Fine Tuning from Nothing”.
   (the following is a transcript from his event © RDOF, 2017 )

Nothing: A Pronoun denoting the absence of anything

In my many years of doing this, I have found that many people who say that scientific evidence disproves the existence of God, don’t actually know the evidence.  … Many times they don’t know the deep scientific evidence which makes up the basis for their belief, (yet they still believe it) and so it’s more of an emotional foundation rather than a logical foundation.  This happens all the time in conversations that I have with people.  So, what we’re going to do is look at some of the evidence here.  We’re going to look at the fundamental forces of the universe.

Recently, scientists have found that the fundamental forces of the universe are perfectly set, or fine tuned to allow human life.  They are tuned to an exactness that defies comprehension.  Scientists call this, rightly, fine tuning of the universe.  The values of these forces are tuned so precisely, that if you change them by even an infinitesimal amount, you would not exist.  There are many of these (forces).

One example is gravity, or the gravitational constant.  If the value of gravity changed by even 1 part in 10 sextillion quintillion human life would be impossible.  Folks, that’s 1 with 40 zero’s after it [10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000].  To explain how incredibly small 1 part in sextillion-quintillion is, imagine all the grains of sand on a beach, now imagine all the grains of sand in all the beaches in all the world.  Ok, that’s about a quintillion grains of sand.  Now, take that number and multiply it by 10 sextillion.  Now, wrap your head around that amount of grains of sand. 

In this analogy, if all of these grains of sand represented the value of gravity, how many grains of sand would you have to add or subtract in order for human life to be impossible? {dramatic pause}  ONE.  That’s how precisely gravity alone has to be set in order for you to exist and be here tonight.  The chance, obviously, the chance that gravity would be set this precisely by accident or by chance alone would be less of a chance of you winning the lottery every second in human history.  And, it’s not just gravity.

There are many other forces that have to be fine tuned in just this way.  When you add them all up, the chances of this happening randomly or accidentally are so logically impossible that it just makes your mind boggle.  They are so astronomical that it really does make it logically impossible. … So the question is how could the forces of the universe be this fine tuned by just chance.  This demands an explanation, it demands an explanation. 

Well, atheist scientists have an explanation for this.  They have an explanation that they say has ruled out God.  Do you know what it is?  The multiverse, anybody heard of that?  Let me explain a multiverse to you.  They say that instead of a creator being responsible for the fine tuning of the universe, that instead our universe is just one in an infinite number of parallel universes going on right now just as real as ours.  And, in these universes every possible event of any kind is being played out, every possible event of any kind has occurred.  That means there’s one where I’m a wrestler named Dominant; there’s one where Pastor Reggie is a metal rock star {laughter}… Every possible of any kind has been played out in one of these universes. 

This is the logic, so they say that, by chance somewhere in one of these vast number of universes, our finely tuned universe just popped into existence.  That is the current explanation for the fine tuning of the universe.   If you’re here tonight and you believe that scientific evidence disproves a designer of the fine tuning of the universe, here’s your evidence.  This is the current presiding explanation.  Atheist theoretical physicist, Sean Carroll, believes “An infinite number of universes is more plausible than God.”  “…each potential state does not cease to exist…each potential state creates a new universe and is real in that new universe.”  “Carroll states that he believes that the number of alternate universes actually existing is actually infinite.”  (Evolution News, Aug 2, 2017)  That is how they explain away the fine tuning of gravity and all the other constants.  That’s the way they explain it.  There are an infinite number of universes where every possible event has occurred, we just happen to live in the one where this series of events occurred.  Is that enough for you?

There is a philosophical problem though that rears it’s ugly head here.  If anything is possible in these universes, than it’s quite possible that we’re in a universe where God exists.  So the logic shoots itself in the foot.

I am so blessed to be a part of Daryl’s ministry and teaching.  I learn from him every time I get the opportunity to meet.  I hope you don’t mind my sharing this one excerpt from his teaching, because I find it so valuable and practical in my daily walk.  The bible tells us to put on the armor of God and prepare for the battles each and every day.  This is just one of the many battles we are fighting in today’s world, and I am using RDOF as one of my many weapons.  I believe it could provide value in your walk as well.  If you’d like to look into Daryl’s latest, follow RDOF on Facebook or find his videos on WWW.VIMEO.COM .  I hope you have the opportunity to check out his teachings.

Be Blessed,

Rich

 

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