Author: gabrieltew

My wife, Sharlene, and I have six children. We’re very proud of all of them. They’re all doing very well in life, but some of them have chosen to reject the life of faith in Jesus that we tried to prepare them for during their formative years. And while we’re so very pleased with pretty much all of their life-paths, the path choice of doing life without friendship with Jesus is heart-breaking for us. I know we aren’t the only Christian parents in this situation. So I want to offer some advice that will, hopefully, be both encouraging and enlightening.

Make sure they know you love them. My wife and I received a letter from our son letting us know he had made some decisions in his life, one of which was to not live by faith in Jesus. This news destroyed us and all we could do for several days was cry, hug and pray. 

As we told our other kids about their brother’s letter, they all came straight to me. “Now, Dad, you’ve gotta just love him.”

Every one of them – and Sharlene – said the same words. It bothered me that they thought I needed coaching in my response.

“Of course I’m going to love him! But if I get a chance to talk with him, I’m going to deal with this.” I honestly thought I could change his mind if I could just sit down with him.

“No, just love him. That’s all you need to do. He knows how you feel; he’s heard it his whole life. Now he just needs to know you love him.

Trust God with their journey. As Sharlene and I sat at dinner that week with our son and his wife, the Lord spoke very clearly to me, “The reason you feel you have to deal with this is because you don’t trust Me to do it.”

What my family were all trying to say to me God essentially said in a way that cut straight to my heart. Once I understood His perspective on it, I was able to be at peace with not being in control of it.

Back to the idea of just loving them for a second. It’s challenging to communicate love in an age when people equate love with approval. If you love me, you’ll approve my choices; if you don’t approve how can you expect me to feel love. We’ve learned that love must be shouted, while disapproval must be whispered, if said at all.

Don’t accept condemnation for their choices. One of the thoughts that invaded our minds was that we had made some mistakes that caused our son to reject Jesus. Two truths helped us get past that condemning idea: 

1. Sharlene heard a podcast speaker one day on her drive who pointed out that God Himself created his first two children without sin, placed them in a sinless environment and had fellowship with them every day; and they still chose to go against His plan for them. The point was that, if that can happen to the kids of our perfect Father, why would we take on condemnation if it happens to ours?
2. Days after receiving the letter, I preached a message on John 9 (The Man Born Blind). In this story, Jesus’ disciples asked him why the man was born blind. Was it his sin or his parents’ sin? Those were the only two possibilities in their minds. But Jesus opened their minds to a completely different possibility. It had nothing to do with the cause of the blindness; more important was the purpose of it. It was neither his or his parents’ sin, Jesus revealed, but so that the work of God could be manifest. The disciples were focused on the cause; Jesus pointed them to the purpose. Then He healed the man (the works of God) and fulfilled the purpose for the man’s blindness. We learned to focus on God’s purpose, knowing it’s ultimately to give our son eternal life and bring glory to God. We decided we’d focus on purpose and not cause.

Gather an army of prayer warriors. I don’t know how we would’ve gotten through those first weeks after receiving the letter without the prayers and encouragement of so many of our friends. Our small group basically saved our life during that season. That was seven years ago now, and we still depend upon the prayers of our Christian brothers and sisters.

See them as you would someone who isn’t your child who isn’t yet a Christ follower. We meet people all the time who are about our kids’ age who aren’t Jesus followers yet. We never even think of being compulsory or applying pressure to those people to accept Jesus. So why would we think that response would be effective – or appropriate – with our kids? We’ve learned to see our kids as friends. The age of our having authority over our children is gone. And we don’t want to be manipulative parents. We’ve decided to just be friends; that’s all we can really be anyway.

Obviously, I’m referring to prodigal kids who are adults living their own lives. For kids still under their parents roof and/or authority, I’m sure the advice should be different. 

If you’re the parent of a prodigal and would enlist Sharlene and me as prayer warriors, please leave your invite in the comments, no names necessary.

There’s a very simply way to raise your IQ. Maybe not easy to do, since it may go against your very nature, but the process is simple.

And it’s easy to understand. It’s also free, financially at least; no costly service or plan to purchase. But it will take some sacrifice. 

There are different ways to explain why humans are more intelligent than animals. From a physiological standpoint, we have more neurons in our brains’ cerebral cortex than other mammals do. And our brains’ different regions are able to strategically interact with each other; in other words, we can consider our own thoughts. A more everyday language way of saying it is that we have self-awareness. A human is the only earthly creature that can consciously, intentionally evaluate and make judgments about their inner selves.

So my premise is that if we can sharpen our self-awareness, we will then be increasing our intelligence. We have the opportunity to raise our IQ.

Pride, Scripture says, leads to self-destruction. It precedes a fall, precipitates failure. I think that’s because pride skews our self-awareness. It positions us to see ourselves as better than we actually are and others, including people, God and factors in our situations, as less than they really are. And since we overestimate ourselves and underestimate externals, surprisingly to ourselves, we fall. We fall in performance because we have fallen in intelligence. And we fall in intelligence because of pride.

This disease is known as intelligence deficiency due to pride (IDDTP). It originated in the heart of Satan and is highly contagious. By the way, he serves as the perfect example of IDDTP, having gone from arch angel level intelligence to a being so dumb that he continually challenges the invincible God of all creation. The good news is IDDTP is treatable. Self-administered under the supervision of the Holy Spirit, humility infusion has proven immediately effective at reversing IDDTP. Humility can even elevate intelligence beyond the baseline because it has the opposite effect of pride. 

Humility comes from a word that means dirt. It symbolizes the act of positioning oneself on the ground, the lowest possible position. From that perspective, a person can see themselves and externals in a more accurate light, which reactivates the cerebral cortex neuro-function and opens up intra-cerebral pathways, allowing us to assess and judge ourselves more accurately in relation to externals. 

In short: pride makes us dumb; humility makes us smart. And the only cost for the treatment is our self-destructive pride. I think I’ll try it.

Join me in raising your IQ?

David was nearly invincible on the battlefield, ten times greater as a warrior than his predecessor, able to hold his own with The Thirty and was as great a general and king as he was a warrior. How could the evil one ever snuff out the light of Israel? Apparently it would never happen, not against this anointed man of war.

A king would normally be with his troops in battle this time of year, but David was not in the arena in which he’d proven so successful. No, he was in a different arena now, and he was far less skillful in this one

What’s that he sees? A beautiful woman bathing. Who is she? Uriah’s wife. Wife? Wife! But David can’t walk away. Heck, he can’t even look away. He’s now in the arena of the lure. And he’s as good as caught. Defeated. Finally. 

Eve was without sin and living in the perfect environment with her perfect husband, and they talked everyday with the Perfect One, their Creator.

Don’t eat of that tree” God had said. Probably best to not touch it, not go near it, not even look at it.

Wow, that fruit is impressive. Must taste delicious. Certainly is beautiful. It’s the most potent brain food in the garden, she understands. 

With the help of the serpent, Eve finds the fruit irresistible. What was forbidden has now become the lure. She takes. She eats She shares. They disobey. Sin. Fallen.

Satan’s pretty good with this lure thing. Of course the flesh gives him a decided advantage. If only we could somehow gain an advantage over the devil and the flesh.

“Now we [believers in Jesus] have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God.” (1 Corinthians 2:12)

“You are of God, little children, and have overcome [the spirits in the world that are against Christ], because He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4)

So we actually  have gained an advantage over Satan, the flesh and the world (the unholy trinity). 

Every time one of us finds ourselves in trouble, in a seemingly vulnerable situation, in circumstances that appear bleak, it’s simply God luring our enemy so He can defeat him for us. 

Jesus on the cross was the lure and the empty grave was God defeating our enemy; now we have victory over sin, death, hell and the grave! God is obviously better with the lure than our enemy is. And He uses the same strategy in our lives; He calls us to surrender, to sacrifice, to death, so that He may lure our enemy into the trap that binds him and sets us free.

Let me please end with two encouraging thoughts from Scripture:

1. God will surely deliver you from the snare of the fowler (see Psalm 91:3)
2. Since Jesus has set us free, don’t let yourself be caught again by the yoke of our former slavery. (see Galatians 5:1)

Long ago, centuries before the advent of the self-help guru or the first however-many-easy-steps-to-whatever article was written, a formula guaranteeing prosperity and success was given, received and proven completely effective. This was some 3,500 years ago. The recipients of the guarantee immediately faced thirty-two major challenges. In thirty-one of those challenges they followed the plan and were successful. In the one that they didn’t follow the plan, they failed miserably. The guarantee was valid then, and it’s still valid today.

Moses was dead. But what God had given Moses was very much alive. God had given him the promise that this generation of Israelites would enter and occupy the land He had sworn to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He had given Moses the anointing to lead this Jewish nation that He verified with miracle after miracle. Most importantly, He had given Moses the Law. All these gifts were still alive; they just needed to be transferred to the leader God would use next. Enter Joshua.

As Joshua prepared himself and the Hebrew people for the mission – entering the land of Canaan – God delivered to Joshua the timeless foolproof formula for success. It had everything to do with God’s Law, which He had given through Moses. And the formula was very simple:

1. Think
2. Speak
3. Do

Think. The word God actually used for Joshua was meditate. Meditation in the ancient Hebrew sense is in some ways the very opposite of the way many people use it today. When people do meditations today, they’re attempting to achieve mental clarity and emotional calmness.

Biblical meditation is about filling the mind, not clearing it. And the way that’s done is by cycling the message of God through the mind over and over, constantly throughout the day and through the night. It’s doing mentally what cattle and some other animals do physically. These animals have more than one stomach, so when they first swallow their food they aren’t done with it. They bring it up again later and chew it some more. After a series of chewings and swallowings, their food is finally assimilated (the nutrients become living tissue, actually part of the animal’s body) 

That’s what God wanted for Joshua and his generation, that His Law would become part of who they were. For that to happen, they would need to follow His instructions to rehearse His precepts when they sat at home, when they walked down the road, when they lay down and when they rose again. Later, King Solomon would pen that a person becomes whatever they embrace mentally. To Joshua God was calling in advance for him to live out this truth He would reveal in a few hundred years through the wisdom of Solomon. 

This formula for us today, because of Jesus and the covenant He established for us, expands to include more than the Law of Moses. For us, it means the law of Christ or the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, as Paul wrote. The law of Christ is simply: believe in Jesus Christ, God’s Son for salvation. It also includes all of New Testament Scripture and the light it sheds on the Old Testament.

Speak. Let every word you say be My Law, whether as a direct quote or in keeping with it’s meaning, God was essentially saying to Joshua. That was the second part of the formula for success, although God actually said it first, before mentioning the meditating/thinking part of the instruction. 

Jesus would later teach that our words ultimately flow from whatever is in our hearts or minds, so our success in the speak piece depends much on what we do with the think piece.

Still, as James taught through his epistle, it’s wise to be intentional with our words, rather than just leaving our speech up to the natural flow from our hearts’ contents.

The bottom line is this: everything we say should line up with God’s Word.

Do. The whole reason for the think and speak parts of this guarantee is to impact our behavior. If we can act in accordance with what God has spoken, success is ours, guaranteed.

A point I should have made in the beginning is that success is defined as achieving what God has instructed us to achieve. It’s just like God to require something of us and then give us everything we need to meet it. That’s what He’s done here. He’s given us a very simple formula that guarantees our success. Then He’s given us His Word, His Son and His Spirit. He’s given us His guarantee. All that’s left is for us to follow the formula.

Do not let this book of the law depart from your mouth; but meditate on it day and night, that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful. (Joshua 1:8)

Peewee was nearly seventy years old now. As he invited me into the living room of his doublewide, it stood out to me that he moved more slowly, talked more slowly, was less energetic than the younger version of this man I had spent much time with years before. His son, not even thirty years old, had recently passed away. Peewee was hurting. That was the real reason for his slower movements and more subdued demeanor. 

But he was still strong. Peewee had always been strong. He and his first wife, Mary, who had passed away years before, had seven children. For nearly twenty years they lived in a tenant house on my family’s farm and helped us on the farm, their family working alongside ours. My siblings and I grew up with Peewee and Mary’s kids.

We endured together the muggy hot summer workdays in the fields of southeastern North Carolina that built our character and took our strength. It seemed to me, though, that Peewee was always strong, no matter how hot the day or how hard the job.

But Peewee did have a weakness. Most weekends much of his very hard-earned money would buy him a bottle. Apparently, the strength we’d all seen in him through the long work week forsook him in his beginning-of-the-weekend money management decisions.

“Did you know your Mama was the reason I quit drinking?” Peewee said in our conversation that had turned from his recently passed son to my parents who had passed a few years before.

“No. I never knew that.”

“She was. One day I was working on a tractor for your daddy and your mama came out to the shop. She said, ‘Peewee I want to talk with before you leave today.’ I said ‘okay.’” 

Peewee and I could always talk in an open-hearted way. He and his family were African American, and we had an unusual bond that accommodated our honest conversations about, among other things, racial issues, even personal ones that existed right there on our farm. 

My dad had been a prejudiced man and didn’t always treat Peewee the best. Peewee could share his frustrations with me, and I mine with him. He’d had a lot of pressure, feeding a family of nine on the wages of a farm laborer, so weekend binges were his way of coping. (My dad came to Christ years after those days of our two families working together, and Daddy’s racial views improved drastically. One year Peewee’s family and ours celebrated Christmas together.)

“When I was leaving late that afternoon, your mama stopped me in the driveway. She said ‘Peewee, you know, you work so hard for your money, and we depend on you so much. But you can’t get ahead because you spend your money on alcohol. You and Mary could own your own home, and who knows what else you could achieve. But you can’t do it unless you stop drinking.’”

I had not known about that conversation. What I did know was that I was sitting in a house that Peewee owned, situated on a plot of several acres he had bought and built houses on for some of his children. I knew he had given so much money to his local church, which one of his sons now pastored, that they were able to build a nice sanctuary, in which Peewee and all his family gather weekly for worship. I knew this strong man who never could seem to get ahead was now financially strong.

Peewee looked down, fighting back tears. “I never took another drink.”

“I had no idea. Thanks for telling me that, Peewee.” 

My mom was a quiet, gentle soul. She had to step squarely out of her comfort zone to speak to Peewee the way she had that day. She never knew the impact of her courageous words to Peewee. But he had obviously remembered them well.

 Jesus said to not let our left hand know what our right hand is doing. If we apply that to the Body of Christ, we shouldn’t go around to the other members of the body pointing out the good things we’ve done. 

If we each apply it to our own body, we should be willing to give and help without keeping a record of it, crediting ourselves as deserving of a reward for it. 

When I was a kid working on the farm I would occasionally suggest to my parents that I be paid for my work “like the others who work on our farm,” I would say. My parents’ response to me was usually, “The work itself is your reward.”

I never made sense of that – that there was value for me in exhausting myself in the hot sun, my body becoming filthy and sore – until I realized years later that those days of work added intrinsic value to me, like work ethic, know-how, sense of accomplishment, and fond memories of working alongside family and friends. 

My parents were teaching me, whether intentionally or not, the lesson of your left hand not knowing what your right hand is doing. “Just work well and let that be it” more simply put.

I have no doubt that many, if not all, who are reading this pour, and often, yourselves out without ever thinking what you deserve in return or of telling others so they’ll admire you for it. That’s the lesson of Jesus at work in your real life.  

It was cool to learn what my mom did for Peewee some thirty years after she did it. She sowed seed she never harvested. Seed sown with fruit unknown to her.

Or is it? I don’t understand clearly how and when God gives rewards to His children, but I’m confident Mama either has by now received them or will soon receive them. She’s with Jesus now, not because of any good things she did in life, but because she trusted Him to be her Savior. He’ll decide how and when rewards are given. Our job is but to have our seed sown with fruit unknown.

As Jesus entered the city of  Jerusalem, He rode on a donkey colt, which blends an unlikely combination of the elements of royalty and humility. The people laid down before Him a ground-covering of palm branches, a veritable red carpet for a  first-century new king. 

They shouted “Hosanna!” which means “Save us!” Surely the crowd wanted salvation from Rome. But give Jesus a week and He’ll bring salvation from a bigger, stronger, more ancient and oppressive empire than Rome could ever be.  He’ll deliver a blow to our evil foe and deliver us from the death he wants for us. Jesus will deliver us – save us! – from sin and its consequences.

For the previous three plus years, Jesus had been consistent in His messaging: the Kingdom of Heaven is here! John had shouted the same message as he baptized Jews in preparation for the Messiah. The idea was that John would have them positioned to receive the King and King Jesus would offer Himself to them.

Now here they were. The week He would literally offer Himself, not only to them, but to Father God as the necessary sacrifice for their deliverance. More accurately, for our deliverance.

The Greek word euangiou is translated in the New Testament as “gospel.” Gospel wasn’t first used as pertaining to Jesus. It was used hundreds of years earlier each time the Greek Empire would annex a new territory or conquer a new nation or city. It was also used later by Rome as it would enlarge its territory by expanding its oppression to include new subjects.

Each time, some official would ride into town, set up a pulpit and announce how good life was now going to be under the rule of this latest emperor. The tax burden would be light; protection from threats would make life easy.  

Promises, promises. Never fulfilled. The light taxes became unbearable, and the easy life was harder than it had been before. 

But Jesus – you know, the One who promised a light burden and an easy yoke – delivered on His promises, even as the one from whom He delivered us was most oppressive, and the One to whom He delivered us is kindest and most generous.

So on the Friday following His triumphal entry into the city, the King humbled Himself most publicly as He delivered on His promise to make things easy and light. He paid the price we couldn’t pay for sin He didn’t commit, all to bring us into His Kingdom of Life. The Kingdom of Heaven had come.

The Kingdom and its King to faithless eyes seemed to have fallen. But on that Sunday, that Kingdom rose with its King. The Kingdom of Heaven, with its King, rose from the dead! As a king goes so goes his kingdom. And, therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven has risen. Higher than Rome. Higher than Greece. Higher than Medo-Persia. Higher than Babylon. Higher than Assyria. Higher than Egypt. Higher than the British, French or Japanese Empire. Higher than any recent or modern empire. Higher than the Kingdom of darkness ever has or ever will. Higher than all the kingdoms of the world in all its history and its pre-history. As Jesus is the King of kings, So Heaven is the Kingdom of kingdoms.

It has risen with its King and lives in the hearts of us, His followers, believers, subjects, children, friends. Heaven is in us! Because, with its King, Heaven is risen! Let us celebrate our King and His Kingdom! Happy Easter, 2023!

A regular antagonist of mine recently publically made the comment, “A good God wouldn’t send the ones He ‘loves’ to Hell.” He was mocking me and my belief that those who spend their lives rejecting Christ will spend their eternity not with God in Heaven, but without Him in outer darkness as recipients of His judgment. 

Many people ask the question, “How can a good and loving God send people to Hell?” It’s a legitimate question and perhaps the most prevalent one as people try to understand God’s role as eternal judge. 

Jesus came to earth with a message. He said He came into the world not to condemn us but to save us. His plan for salvation is that we simply believe in Him as God’s Son and acknowledge that He gave His life on a cross of Roman execution to satisfy our sin debt and that we accept His gift of forgiveness and eternal life. He told Nicodemus that whoever believes in Him will not be condemned but whoever does not believe is condemned already. 

So it isn’t God condemning us, but our stubbornness to not accept the forgiveness that He offers. 

Let me illustrate it with this scenario. A person is walking down a certain path. God sees the path the person is on and calls out to them: ”Don’t continue down this path! It will lead to the worst possible destruction! Stop! Turn from this path onto this other one I have made that will lead you to the best possible experience. The destinies of both these paths last forever; there’s no end to the destruction of the one you’re on, and there’s no end to the joy of the one onto which I’m inviting you. I’ve made the path to this wonderful life and I’ve prepared its destiny for you. I’ve done all this simply because I love you and I want you to be with Me, because I’ll be there with you in that life of eternal ecstasy. One thing you must do; I cannot do it for you: you must choose My way. It’s your choice.

The person continues down the path they’re on, rejecting God and His call. As they get closer to the end of the path, they begin to complain against God, “How could a loving God say He loves me, yet send me to eternal destruction!? I would never listen to any message from such a God!”

You see how illogical it is to reject Jesus? All He’s doing is offering everlasting life and deliverance from eternal destruction. If this scenario depicts your attitude toward Jesus and His offer of salvation, I beg you to turn to God and accept His offer. Read John 3 for the conversation Jesus had with Nicodemus. Later, in John 19, we read of Nicodemus being involved in the burial of the soon-to-be-risen Savior, indicating that he had chosen to believe in Him. Please do the one thing God cannot do for you: choose Him.

A friend of yours is having big trouble with his attitude toward God. He’s so distant from Him that he’s stopped attending worship service. He’s stopped participating in the downtown street feed, something he’d done faithfully for years. He’s withdrawn from his friend groups and has been isolating. His isolation is brooding, unhealthy, pessimistic, suspecting that God has changed His mind about him and now has it in for him. He confides that it’s been months since he spent devotion time praying and perusing the Scriptures.

Eventually, your friend lashes out at you, “You’re an idiot!“

            “Where did that come from?” you wonder, “What have I done?”

            “Think you’re so much better than everybody else!” as he exposes more of his heart.

            He’s critical of everybody, not just you, but he’s particularly belligerent toward you.

            You drive into the church parking lot excited to connect with God, to worship Him with your friends, to offer a gift to the Lord, a gift of praise, a financial gift for the offering, a gift of time hearing God’s Word with a surrendered heart.

As you’re walking up to the doors of the church, a memory invades your mind. You recall with clarity a conversation you had with someone when you were talking about a mutual friend, the one with the negative attitude. You were saying to that person that your mutual friend could be more effective for God if he would stop pursuing earthly success so vigorously.

            “That’s it!” you realize, “That’s the problem he has with me. It must’ve gotten back to him, what I said.”

            Just as you’re reaching your hand out to open the door and enter to church lobby, these words come to your mind as if someone is speaking them: “Leave your gift and go.” The Scripture immediately comes to mind. The pastor spoke on it several weeks ago and you ran across it again in your morning Bible reading just the other day.

            It’s unmistakable. You know what you have to do. You turn around and walk back to your car, get in and drive to your offended friend’s house.

“We need to talk.” You say when he answers the door. “I think I must’ve hurt you with something I said about you.”

            Your friend nods his head. “Come on in.”

            You and your friend get out of your car and walk toward the entrance to the church.

            “Thank you.” he says, “this is the first time I’ve actually wanted to go to church in a good while.”

            “I just thank you for forgiving me so quickly.” You say with relief, “I’m sorry I caused you such problems.”

            “It’s not all your fault. I didn’t have to take offense.”

            “Let’s go get our praise on.”

But I [Jesus] say, if you are angry with someone, you are subject to judgment! If you call someone an idiot, you are in danger of being brought to court. And if you curse someone, you are in danger of the fires of hell.

            So, if you are presenting a sacrifice at the altar in the Temple and you suddenly remember that someone has something against you, leave your gift there at the altar and go your way. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. (Matthew 5:22-24)

My favorite parable is The Parable of the Sower (or The Farmer Sowing Seed), from
Mark 4. After telling this parable, Jesus told His disciples that, if they couldn’t understand it,
they wouldn’t understand any of His parables. Then He did something for which I’m supremely thankful. He explained it. Had He not, I doubt I would’ve ever understood it.

So a farmer (preacher, whether in a pulpit or having coffee with a friend) sows some
seed (His Word). He’s broadcasting it, not planting it in rows, which means it covers a broad
area. Much of the seed lands in unfruitful places, but also in a fruitful area.

These 6 Ps categorize these areas for us.

1. Porch Pirates. These seed land on the path and are taken immediately by the birds. This
is like when Satan, ever ready to rob us, plucks God’s Word from the path between our
ears and our minds; he usually does this with a distraction – some bad seed to grab our
attention while he pirates our good seed. In the age of so much cyber-shopping and
items delivered to our porches, porch pirates are more common than ever. Sadly,
though, spiritual porch pirating is even more common. God, may we be ever attentive in
2023 to the deliveries of Your Word, precluding its pirating by drinking it quickly into our
hearts.

2. Persecutions. These seed germinate and spring up quickly. But because they’re in the
rocky soil and have under-developed root systems, the sun scorches and kills them. The
sun represents the persecutions that come with following Jesus in an anti-Christian
world. (If anyone is offended by the anti-Christian world term, just follow Jesus and you’ll feel for yourself how real it is.) Lord, please give us the resilience to
persevere all the fiery trials we encounter.

The next three seed categories are those that landed in the thorns. They grow up but
eventually lose the battle, dying and giving way to the plants competing for existence.

3. Preoccupations. It’s very easy to become preoccupied with tiny, trivial worries that eat
away at us until we have nothing productive left by which to live. Lord, please strengthen our focus on You that will burn away the distractions of the enemy.

4. Possessions. It’s also easy to become so focused on managing our resources that they
take up a disproportionate amount of our attention. So our heart is where our earthly
treasure is. God, help us to store up treasures in heaven.

5. Pleasures. The flesh is tricky because many of its desires are good to a point – like food,
sexual intimacy and relaxation. But they quickly and easily become gluttony, lust and
laziness or addiction. At that point they’ve become unfruitful and destructive. Oh Lord, that we would find our pleasure fully in You.

6. Produce. The final one – only one – of the six categories produces a great harvest for
God. This ground is fertile and free of contaminants. This is a heart that’s soft toward
God and hungry for His Word. God, please help us to keep our hearts soft and pure,
always ready to accept and apply Your Word.

May the Lessons from this parable bring much fruit for God’s kingdom in our lives!

Mark 4:3-20
 3  “Listen! Behold, a sower went out to sow.  4  And it happened, as he
sowed, that some seed fell by the wayside; and the birds  [a] of the air came and devoured
it.  5  Some fell on stony ground, where it did not have much earth; and immediately it
sprang up because it had no depth of earth.  6  But when the sun was up it was scorched,
and because it had no root it withered away.  7  And some seed fell among thorns; and the
thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no  [b] crop.  8  But other seed fell on good
ground and yielded a crop that sprang up, increased and produced: some thirtyfold,
some sixty, and some a hundred.”
9  And He said  [c] to them, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

The Purpose of Parables
10  But when He was alone, those around Him with the twelve asked Him about the
parable.  11  And He said to them, “To you it has been given to know the  [d] mystery of the
kingdom of God; but to those who are outside, all things come in parables,  12  so that
‘Seeing they may see and not perceive,
And hearing they may hear and not understand;
Lest they should turn,
And their sins be forgiven them.’ ”

The Parable of the Sower Explained
13  And He said to them, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you
understand all the parables?  14  The sower sows the word.  15  And these are the ones by the wayside where the word is sown. When they hear, Satan comes immediately and takes
away the word that was sown in their hearts.  16  These likewise are the ones sown on
stony ground who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with gladness;  17  and
they have no root in themselves, and so endure only for a time. Afterward, when
tribulation or persecution arises for the word’s sake, immediately they stumble.  18  Now
these are the ones sown among thorns; they are the ones who hear the word,  19  and
the cares of this world, the deceitfulness of riches, and the desires for other things
entering in choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.  20  But these are the ones sown on
good ground, those who hear the word,  [e] accept it, and bear fruit: some thirtyfold, some
sixty, and some a hundred.”

The one trait that sets Christianity apart (or should) from every other religion, philosophy and belief system is grace. Grace is simply the undeserved favor God generously offers everyone willing to accept Jesus Christ as God’s Son sent to save us from our sin problem. Every other religion/system is predicated on getting what we deserve and, therefore, earning what we want and need. 

Judaism, the very system from which Jesus, a Jew, brought freedom after fulfilling its requirements and its prophecies is built on the Law of Moses, which delineates consequences for each violation of one of its 613 laws. In Hinduism and Buddhism, Karma assures justice is served, even if it takes multiple generations through reincarnation to accomplish it. Crimes and punishments under Islamic Sharia law dictate very strict dos and don’ts, with the harshest of resulting punishments, especially for women. Those are the big three besides Christianity, and as we journey through the other less known systems we don’t find anything resembling the grace of Jesus.

There really is a constant string of surprising pieces of good news as a Jesus follower walks out their faith with Jesus. What makes it so surprising is the “you-get-what-you-deserve” environment we all come from and must continue to walk through. Grace surprises me everyday and it’s been doing it for almost forty years now. (I came to Christ in 1983.)

​Grace is the favor of God (FOG) and all us recipients of life in Christ walk in it, often without even knowing it. It’s so counterintuitive to our original nature, so foreign to our current culture, that we scarcely believe or recognize it. 

​Grace will always be foreign to whatever culture exists in this world – that is, until Jesus reigns those one thousand years on the earth. That shouldn’t surprise us. But the FOG shouldn’t be counterintuitive to those walking in it, to those who have accepted God’s grace by accepting Jesus. Anyone who doesn’t recognize the FOG, will never live as a DOG.

​A DOG is exactly the life God wants for us. One of the main ideas Jesus tried to instill in His disciples, and the Spirit tries to instill in us modern age disciples, is that we are to dispense what has been so lavishly poured out to us. I am to be a dispenser of grace (DOG)

​ Jesus said people would know his followers by the love we have for one another…we are to love our enemies, those who mistreat us…it’s no longer eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but give another chance to the one who just slapped you in the face…don’t repay evil with evil but give even more to the one who just stole from you…don’t stone the adulterer but let them go without condemnation and help them where they need help…don’t help only the ones who can repay you, but precisely the ones who can’t and leave it to God to repay whatever recompense there’ll be. 

​This idea is radical, and that’s exactly the point. FOG is foreign to this world, but a DOG can change that. Imagine what an entire worldwide church of us can do.

​I must say, lest I be a hypocrite, that I am not the model DOG. I’m definitely still orienting to the concept. But God has taught me that, while writing about, or preaching about, something may not make me exemplary in it, it must challenge me to apply it along with – yea, ahead of – my readers/listeners. So His Spirit is giving me individualized directions as I’m typing. Will you join me by seeking Him for yours? I’ll be your DOG; will you be mine? After all, we are in the FOG.