l Thank ... Who?

A  preacher told about a lady who was an atheist. One morning she and a friend stepped out into the glories of a beautiful fall morning. As she beheld the brilliant sun peeking through the haze and the frost on the meadow and the brightly colored leaves lazilydrifting to the ground, she was filled with the beauty and wonder of it all. Seemingly unable to restrain her wonder, gushed to her friend, “I am so thankful. I’m just so grateful for it all.” And her believing friend asked, “Grateful to whom, my dear?”

 Really, who do we thank “for it all”? Our lucky stars?” Karma? The so-called Big Bang? The Undirected chance and fate? Who do we thank on Thanksgiving (or any other) Day for the delightful and delicious sights and smells and tastes of a fabulous meal provided with little or no effort on our part? Do we thank and praise the platters that hold the mountains of food? Or the stove that cooked it? Or the grocery store where it was purchased? Or the turkey for sacrificing itself? No — we thank the one / ones who provided the meal; the one who bought the supplies, baked and boiled and fried and arranged the feast. We thank the hosts who put in all the labor, be it Mom and / or Grandma or whoever. If we are thoughtful, we thank her / him / them for the love behind it all! Going further, if we look around in our world and think about what we see, logic compels us to agree with this little piece of prose attributed to Maltie Babcock: “Back of the loaf is the snowy flour, And back of the flour the mill. And back of the mill is the wheat and the shower, and the sun and the Father's will.” Maltie nailed it. At the end of the day our thanksgiving has to go to God. In the words of Psalm 68:19 (New King James Version): “Blessed be the Lord, Who daily loads us with benefits, The God of our salvation! Selah.” The New Testament writer James acknowledged God above as the giver of “every good and perfect gift” (James 1:17).

 Ravi Zacharias, in his book Can Man Live Without God? (p 86), noted the fact that America as a culture traditionally sets aside one day a year to say “Thank You” to God. But he went on to bemoan the fact that, thanks to the skeptic, “Thanksgiving Day has been reduced to Turkey Day.” He then quoted G. K. Chesterton (p 88) who wrote these challenging words: “I suppose it is like this. If my children wake up on Christmas morning and have somebody to thank for putting candy in their stocking, have I no one to thank for putting two feet in mine?”

 English writer, poet, moralist and critic Samuel Johnson (did 1709-17840 said, “Gratitude is a fruit of great cultivation; you do not find it among gross people.” It is to be feared that America as a culture is populated by many gross people. In what is arguably the most materially blessed nation in history, grumbling is cultivated far more than gratitude. Let it be said with love but let it be said loud and clear and without blinking that God’s people of all people will be careful to cultivate gratitude. To fail to do so is to fail to be God’s people. Let us say ‘thank you’ often to one another. But always, every day, in every time and place, first and foremost, and without shame or reservation let us say it often and out loud — thank ... God!

 Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!” – 2 Corinthians 9:15

                                 Dan Gulley, Smithville TN            

How Children Learn About the Church!

         Psalm 78:5–7 reminds us the great task of telling and teaching our children God’s Word falls first upon parents: “For He established a testimony in Jacob, And appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers, That they should make them known to their children; That the generation to come might know them, The children who would be born, That they may arise and declare them to their children, That they may set their hope in God, And not forget the works of God, But keep His commandments.” Parents, your children are always watching the way you live and listening to the words you speak. What are you telling / teaching them about the church?
     Things we say to our children can backfire on us. One little girl noticed a few strands of grey hair in her mother’s mostly brown hair. She asked, “Why are some of your hairs grey, Mama?” The mother replied, “Well, sweetheart, every time you don’t listen and do something naughty, one of my hairs turns grey.” The little girl was silent for only a moment and then said, “Mama, is that why ALL of Grandma’s hair is grey?” Ouch! Our children really are looking, listening, and learning even if we don’t realize it. The children’s song says, “O be careful little mouth what you say.” Why? “For the Father up above is looking down in love, So be careful little mouth what you say.” Would it not be proper to amend that song for adults in the church (especially parents and grandparents, to say, “O be careful big mouth what you say?” Surely so, for not only is the Father up above looking on and listening in to what big mouths say, but the children who live in our houses and ride in our cars are listening, too. Not only listening but looking and remembering and absorbing. Paul Faulkner wrote, “A child is a little video camera on legs” (Raising Faith Kids in a Fast-Paced World, p 74). That’s a funny thought, but a sobering one, too, for they see and hear the good, the bad, and the ugly in their parents and other older people. And, as Faulkner went on to note, what is being recorded will likely play back in the child’s life as they get older. In Faulkner’s words, “You’ll get to see a replay when you are about 40 and your children are grown — you’ll see them imitating you in their lives” (p 74).
     An appeal stated in 1 Corinthians 11:1 has special application for parents who want their children to love the Lord and His church — “Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.” Parents, you don’t have to tell your kids to imitate you. They will, at least early on. Like wet cement, whatever falls on them makes an impression, good or bad. Wise parents realize the wisdom stated in the old adage, “Monkey see, monkey do.” Our children ARE watching and they ARE listening and they ARE learning! Parents, whether God-fearing or not, cannot escape teaching their children about the church. We teach by example, and daily impressions are being made that may last a lifetime. What are your children learning about the church and her elders, deacons, preachers, song leaders, Bible class teachers, and the good, faithful, truth-seeking people who sit on the pews in church assemblies? What impressions are you leaving on their moldable minds? You can’t teach them to love the church if you loathe it; you won’t teach them it is important if you act like it is irrelevant. Whatever they are learning, the naked and perhaps uncomfortable truth is they are learning it in their younger years from you. Will your children love the Lord and the church? You greatly increase the odds they will if you truly love them yourself. 

           Dan Gulley, Smithville TN

The Powerful Potential of Parenthood!

It costs to be a parent these days. In 2017 the USDA issued Expenditures on Children (also known as “The Cost of Raising a Child”). In 2017, it was estimated a family spent approximately $12, 980 annually per child in a middle-income, two child, married couple family. Parents of a child born in 2017 were thus expected to spend $233,610 to raise the child through age 18. Whether accurate or not, parenthood is an expensive enterprise. A parent said, “We have an 18-year-old daughter. Her name is Alexis. We chose that name because if we hadn’t had her we’d be driving one.” These days they might have named her Tesla! Parenthood comes with other costs besides financial ones. They include huge investments of time, energy, emotion, anxiety, patience and compassion. Real parents have what the Bible calls “natural affection” (KJV Romans 1:31 * 2 Timothy 3:3). That affection elevates the price you pay for being a parent. It always costs to love and care, and the total investment for your child, in personal terms, cannot be measured except to say it is enormous, even staggering, and never-ending. Elizabeth Stone said it well: “The decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” In short, the price you pay for being a parent is to turn over your heart to your child / children (and in many instances grandchildren). You shouldn’t live your life just for your children, but your own happiness and wholeness and well-being, to a great extent, will forever be tied to theirs. As Jacob’s son Judah said about his aged father’s love for his youngest son (Benjamin): “his life is bound up in the life of the lad’s” (Genesis 44:30).  King Solomon noted the power of a child to bring happiness or grief to his parents in Proverbs 10:1 — “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the grief of his mother.” Loving parents may have to give a child up, but they can never let go. God Himself said about His wayward, backsliding children (Israel) — “How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, Israel? ... My heart churns within Me; My sympathy is stirred” (Hosea 11:8). Bible students know God did at last give Israel up to the judgment of captivity. But it broke His heart to do so. Parenthood is costly.                           

 But there is also potential for great power in parenthood! Parents stand in a God-assigned place as His partners — not equal ones, mind you, but vital, incomparable ones! A place no one else can completely fill in the child’s life — not the state, not the school, not the day-care center, not even the church! Two familiar Bible verses remind us parenthood is oozing with potential and power for good: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6), and “You fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4). There’s the potential power of parenthood! Parents co-partner with God in the awesome and fearful process of not only bringing a brand-new life into the world, but also nurturing and training and guiding her / him to mental, physical, social, and spiritual well-being and maturity. And most of all, guiding it toward Heaven. Paul Faulkner wrote, “When we bring a child into the world, we start a soul toward eternity ... a soul that will never die. A soul that will spend eternity in either Heaven or hell” (What Every Family Needs, p 129). Thank God for moms and dads who not only pay the price but consciously, consistently, and passionately wield the power of true parenthood! 

  Dan Gulley, Smithville TN         

The Four-Letter Word God Wants Your Child to Learn!

Life is exciting around a small child. School is always in session – sometimes for the child, and sometimes for the parents and grandparents! Children consider no question too silly to ask. Hector Bernasconi of Kingston, Canada reminds us that a child’s brain is full to the brim with questions just waiting to be asked and answered. He wrote: “Our six-year-old daughter, Terra, has a need to ask questions ... lots of questions. Finally, one day, my wife had had it. ‘Have you ever heard that curiosity killed the cat?’ my wife asked. ‘No,’ replied Terra. ‘Well, there was a cat, and he was very inquisitive. And one day, he looked into a big hole, fell in, and died!” my wife told her. Terra was intrigued: ‘What was in the hole?’” (Reader’s Digest, 4/11, p 61). Like I said at the top — school is always in session, and often it is the parents who learn from the children! No wonder, then, that our parents seem to grow wiser as we get older! This is a truth all young people need to learn. Under normal circumstances, in a home that operates the way common sense and Scriptural wisdom tells it is ought to, difficult as it is for some young people to believe, parents are smarter than their children! At least when it comes to things that you can learn only from the school of hard knocks and long experience at living. And if your parents are sincere and especially if they are devoted Christians, trained in the ways of God, they will give their children the very best advice and counsel and guidance they could possibly receive, even when you may not disagree with them. That’s why the Bible has this direct word for children: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right” (Ephesians 6:1).                                             

 There’s the four-letter word God wants your child, yea, every child to learn – “OBEY.” Especially your parents. Why? Because God said, “This is right.” It’s just the way it’s supposed to be. It is not right and it’s not good and it’s not healthy for kids or parents or families or schools or societies when children are allowed to disregard authority. Children should obey parents because it is right to do so. It is right to do so because this directive has been revealed by God — “Honor your father and your mother” is the very centerpiece of what we know as the 10 Commandments (Exodus 20:12 & * Deuteronomy 5:16). It is noteworthy that when Moses cane down from Sinai with two tablets of stone containing ten fundamental commands for the physical and spiritual safety,

security and well-being of Israelite society, smack dab in the middle of the list was the command to honor your father and mother! This is a central part of God’s Old Testament revelation to mankind, reiterated a number of times in the New Testament. The long and short of it is you really don’t respect God if you don’t respect your parents. Children need to remember — when you obey your parents, you please not only them, but you also please the Lord. A woman from Georgia named Marguerite Provost told about her three-year-old granddaughter, Beverly, who was playing with her toys. Her mother was folding laundry across the room and noticed Beverly’s shirt was dirty and needed to be changed. After calling twice with no response, her mother gave the full three-name call: Beverly Elizabeth Provost, did you hear me?” Beverly answered, “Yes, Mama. My ears heard you, but my legs didn’t.” Parents need to teach, and children need to learn the four-letter word God wants every child to know — “OBEY.”  It’s still the right thing to do.

              Dan Gulley, Smithville TN 

Cracked Bible or a Cracked World!

Fred W. Cropp, past President of the American Bible Society was asked, “What do you recommend for keeping the leather on the back of Bibles from cracking and peeling?” His reply: “There is one oil that is especially good for treatment of leather on Bibles.

In fact, it will ensure your Bible to stay in good condition. It is not sold but may be found in the palm of the human hand.” Sadly, not nearly enough Bibles are cracked open these days. Many people simply do not read or respond to the Bible’s life-changing and soul-saving message. The result? Un-cracked Bibles lead to a cracked world. America’s (and the world’s) greatest problems are not technological or material ones. We have put footprints on the moon and are now aiming to send humans to explore Mars. Medical marvels continue to astound us. Amazing communication and travel technologies have shrunk the world and made it a neighborhood. We daily enjoy creature comforts and use devices and live lifestyles that ancient kings never experienced on their very best days.

In spite of these and many other truly spectacular achievements, the immorality, irreverence, vulgarity, violence, and overall moral and spiritual callousness and coarseness of our culture clearly proclaims that a footprint on the moon may not be as important as a thumbprint on the Bible. The Bible reveals God’s love and concern for us, and teaches us to love God supremely, and very closely behind that to love our neighbor as ourselves (Mark 12:28-31). The apostle Paul writes that “love does no harm to a neighbor” (Romans 13:10). The harm he had in mind includes the nasty stuff we read about in the two verses preceding that directive — not committing adultery, not murdering, not stealing, not being deceitful and untruthful, and not being stingy and greedy (Romans 13:8-9). These are the very things that continue to cause cracks in countless lives, marriages, homes, and communities around the globe. They are proof that while technology, research, science and education make us smarter, they cannot make people better.

America’s ongoing moral and spiritual confusion cannot be traced to or blamed on too much Bible reading, preaching and practice. It’s easy to oversimplify, but generally speaking, people who read and hear and then actually heed (that is, put into practice) the Bible’s teaching will be made better. “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves . . . But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:22, 25). Thomas Jefferson didn’t believe everything the Bible says about Jesus Christ, but he was honest enough to admit the Bible’s unique and positive influence in human lives. In the flowery language of his time he wrote, “The studious perusal of the Sacred Volume will make better citizens, better husbands, and better fathers” (quoted by H. I. Hester, The Heart of Hebrew History, p 9).  Abraham Lincoln said, “I am profitably engaged in reading the Bible. Take all of this upon reason that you can, and the balance on faith, and you will live and die a better man” (Ibid). The Bible, when put into practice, makes the best people in the here and now and prepares us to be acceptable to God in the hereafter.  Here’s a statement worth thinking about: “A Bible that is cracked and coming apart is usually owned by someone who isn’t!” Crack your Bible today!

       Dan Gulley, Smithville TN      

Inconvenient Truth About Marriage!

Helen Rowland said, “Marriage is like twirling a baton or eating with chopsticks. It looks easy until you try it.” So it does. But it’s not easy. The prevalence of divorce proves that. Al and Tipper Gore stunned many when they announced in June 2000 that after 40 years of marriage, they were calling it quits. Publicly they claimed that the decision was a mutual one and that the former Vice-President and Second Lady of the United States would remain friends even though they no longer wanted to be married. That kind of talk always leaves me scratching my head and remembering the joke about two cannibals who ate a clown. Afterwards one of them said to the other, “Did that taste funny to you?” Marriages that last a lifetime seem in danger of becoming very rare if not extinct. Once upon a time, the key word as it related to marriage was “commitment” – the “crazy” idea (as many in the world now see it) that a man and woman pledged to take each other for better or worse, for richer or poorer, and to love each other “until death do us part.” Jesus expressed the idea of lifelong commitment in Matthew 19:4-6 — “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” Al Gore was famous for his movie about climate change entitled “An Inconvenient Truth.” In it he asserted the earth is becoming warmer due to irresponsible human activity and that failure to “go green” will prove catastrophic to our world. That “inconvenient truth” is still being debated by experts and denied by some. What is not debatable or deniable is that the Gores, and millions of other men and women, found Jesus’ teaching about marriage and divorce “inconvenient.” As a result, culture invented and practices a much more “convenient untruth,” insisting marriage is not primarily about commitment and mutual needs. Rather, many say, it is about “what best for me.” Not “till death do us part,” but “till desire and delight departs,” not “for better or worse,” but “till the good times are gone.” But if the marriage cools off, if I tire of my responsibilities, or find someone else who makes me “happy,” I am free to bail on my marriage vows — no matter who I hurt or how much — just so long as I am happy. That very convenient and self-centered but still wrong-headed and unbiblical view and practice of marriage has proven to be catastrophic for millions of America’s marriages and families.

 Have you ever seen a marriage based on convenience and selfishness last very long, or be very happy? Brother Ken Joines (now deceased) once wrote that two people in a marriage “for what they can get out if it” is like having two ticks and no dog! Christians follow One who faced the inconvenient truth that doing God’s will meant denying Himself and dying on a cross. The Bible still says, “Love suffers long.” I don’t mean to oversimplify complex problems or painful situations, or to sound unkind. But I wonder if one thing behind so much marital failure and unhappiness today is that many simply find it too inconvenient to love the way God teaches us to. Inconvenient as it may be at times, the truth is marriage still requires commitment, every single day till death do us part. I pray you’ll think about it.

 Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate” (Matthew 19:6) 

     By: Dan Gulley, Smithville TN