NowTHINK!AboutIt

Avoiding Hackneyed...Making Sense

4 Reasons Your Good Works Aren’t Enough

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We are equally hopeless if not equally sinful.

Do All The Good You Can
By All The Means You Can
In All The Ways You Can
In All The Places You Can
At All The Times You Can
To All The People You Can
As Long As Ever You Can
But Don’t Expect That To Get You Into Heaven

Two facts most people know but rarely think about or understand fully are:

One, we aren’t all equally sinful. Some people are excessively sinful while others are much less so. We’ll call the really bad ones the 95 percenters. Everyone else will scale somewhere between 95% and 1%. They could be 50 percenters or 30 percenters or on the odd occasion, 1 percenters. Mother Theresa types would fit in the lowest category.

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The second misunderstood fact is, regardless the difference in scale, everyone is still a sinner and that makes us all equal in one respect. No one can earn or deserve heaven. No one deserves eternal life on their own merit.

We Are Equally Hopeless If Not Equally Sinful

You may be good. You may be very good. I have no doubt that most who read this are better than me. At best, I might be a 50 percenter and there are plenty of people who rank better than 50% but that in no way suggests they have a better chance of getting into heaven than I.

That isn’t my idea. The Bible actually teaches this. There are three verses that suggest every person is hopelessly sinful if not equally so. [Read more…] about 4 Reasons Your Good Works Aren’t Enough

3 Truths About Mom by Becky Pepper

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I do what I want, when I want, where I want, if my Mom says it's OK.

Mother Is Never Perfect
But She’s Always A Beacon Of Hope
And A Shield Of Protection

My MOM was married at age 17. She raised seven children none of whom are rich and famous but all of whom grew up knowing they were loved and cared for.

Moms Share The Gospel

We did not attend church regularly until I was thirteen years old but I KNEW MY MOM Loved God and respected His Word. We attended a church occasionally that some of my Grandmother’s relatives went to, but it was not the church that taught me the most important lessons. It was my MOM that taught me to love God and be kind to all people.

When I was in the second grade, age 6, a friend at school talked about God and the Second Coming of Christ. I was intrigued! I hadn’t heard of these things before so I didn’t understand everything she said but it was only natural for me to ask my MOM about it. I don’t remember all my MOM said but I do remember her explaining to me that Jesus loved me and had died for all my sins. In fact, I knelt down by an old green footstool in our home and prayed and ask Jesus to forgive me and come into my heart and save me.

That was my first experience with the Gospel but my MOM was a constant example of all the things Jesus taught.

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My MOM emphasized honesty, kindness, loyalty, hard work, finish what you start, faithfulness, respect, and even kindness to animals. I don’t remember her sitting me down and teaching me a lesson on any of those things. It’s what she was. Those values were reflected in her everyday life. She taught by example and her influence helped me understand that most of life’s lessons are taught more by example than by classroom instruction.

Moms Teach Manners

My husband’s MOM had many difficulties in her life. She and his Dad were divorced when he was in tenth grade. I unfortunately only saw her a few times but I am eternally grateful for the gentlemanly manners she taught her son.

She taught him how to treat a lady: how to walk on the street with a lady, how to open the car door for her, how to carry things for her, how to treat her with love and respect.

She took pride in her appearance and taught her son to do the same. She also taught her son the importance of reading and words. He says that she, more than any other person, believed in him. It wasn’t that she said, “I believe in you,” but the fact that she expected him to learn and grow. When a mother expects to do well and treats them like they can, they begin to believe it too.

I have two sons. I have tried to teach them to honor and respect their wives; to be a good example for their children. I have tried to teach them all the things my MOM taught me. Their wives tell me that I succeeded (with the help of their father of course). Following is a quote from a post my youngest son recently wrote:

My dad tells me that he used to become frustrated when I was younger because he felt that he couldn’t get me to express myself. He’d ask blunt questions about my day and my experiences and I’d give minimalist answers. “Yes.” “No.” “It was fun.” I’d rarely dive deep into my feelings. My feelings were a quagmire that I could barely negotiate. I wasn’t going to let anyone else in there.

Mom was better at it; her approach less direct. I used to hang out in the kitchen while she made supper or baked desserts for bible study. She’d make leading statements and I’d confirm the things she already suspected. Her superpower, besides having a sixth sense that I still don’t understand, was that she was able to probe my brain without me knowing she was doing it. To me, we were just chatting about everything and nothing. 

Moms Are Always Examples

Moms, we teach by example. Children observe and take in so many things that we are not even aware of. Whether we realize it or not, we are teaching our children every minute of every day by the way we act and react to every situation.

It’s not just your words. It’s your tone of voice, the smile on your face, and the hope you maintain. And it’s definitely something to think about.

The Thing Getting In The Way Of Your Happiness Might Be Your Search For Happiness

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Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems.

Guest Post By Tim Pepper
Find Tim’s Music At TimPepperMusic.com

It occurred to me in the parking lot of Kroger. Listening to a podcast of another celebrity talk about their life and the reality that getting the things they thought they wanted never made them happy, it hit me. We don’t know what happiness feels like. None of us do. How are we supposed to recognize the thing we are striving for if we don’t know what it actually is?

Happiness, and searching for it, and the lack thereof, and the fleeting experiences we’ve had with it, is something we all have in common as humans. It’s an intangible feeling that we are consciously, or subconsciously, or maybe even unconsciously searching for. But we don’t know what it really is. We don’t know where it comes from. We don’t know how to manufacture it. All we really know is that we want it.

Let me be totally clear. We’ve all had happy experiences. We’ve felt it. We know happiness exists. Further, we all think we know what will make us happy. We all think we know how to find it. We all think we know what it is. But we don’t. If we did, we wouldn’t still be chasing it. It comes along, and we either can’t recognize it, or it fills us with anxiety that it might vanish as suddenly as it appeared.

It’s usually in retrospect that we can look at various phases of our lives and say, “Yes! I was happy in those days.”

Tim Pepper is an American singer/songwriter whose work is relatable, emotive, and lyrically driven, hovering between Americana, folk, and rock with a DIY aesthetic.

What accompanied my parking lot epiphany was the idea that we are all under the wrong notion that a life that is a happy one, is all happy. Life is ups and downs. A happy life is no exception. Even in the midst of happiness, there is disappointment, anger, fear, rage, sadness, harsh realities, burdens, and all the other things that are a part of real life. Maybe one of the reasons we find happiness so elusive is that our idea of it is completely and utterly wrong. Maybe our expectations have set us all up for failure.

I’m a newly-wed. We tied the knot 18 months ago and before that, I’d been in very few serious relationships and most of them I’d approached with some level of detachment. The beautiful thing about detachment is that nothing matters. [Read more…] about The Thing Getting In The Way Of Your Happiness Might Be Your Search For Happiness

Bible Inspiration’s Most Important Point

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The Devil's idea is to replace God's idea with a good idea.

Peter Didn’t Understand Inspiration’s
Most Important Point
And That Made Him Vulnerable To Failure

The meaning of inspiration and how it actually worked is not the topic of this post.

It’s an interesting topic and I’ll say enough to establish the basics but the discussion can and has filled volumes. Google it and you’ll get endless pages of search results.

Sadly, most discussions focus so heavily on the meaning of the word inspiration, they fail to develop the most important point:

If the Bible is inspired, it stands alone and needs no help from human ideology.

It’s finished. You can accept it, you can’t change it. It’s God’s Word and His alone.

The Bible is NOT intended to tell us what we already know and it wasn’t provided as a proof text to endorse our pet ideologies.

And God makes that point very succinctly:

For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the LORD. (Isaiah 55:8)

That idea is the motivation of this post.

“Inspiration” Not The Best Word

It should at least be mentioned that the word “inspiration’ is probably not the best word to describe how the Bible came to be.

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The English word has roots in Latin, inspirare, which means “to breathe or blow into” but that doesn’t correspond exactly with the New Testament Greek or with what we understand about how the Bible was written.

More to the point, the word has also taken on new meanings totally unrelated to the Bible. These new meanings have broadened sufficiently to eclipse its biblical meaning.

The Greek word that denotes this process is theopneustos. It is a compound word from “theo” (God) and “pnuema” (spirit) and literally means “God-spirited.” Modern translations, however, are opting for God-breathed instead of Inspiration or God-spirited for obvious reasons.

Inspiration is not a bad word, but with the new connotations, it is no longer the most precise word.

Spiriting isn’t how we express words so God-breathed is a little more relatable to the average person.

However, Inspiration is the word most often used when discussing the concept theologically and I haven’t abandoned the use of it in this post. [Read more…] about Bible Inspiration’s Most Important Point

How Peter Learned Obedience

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Don't fight the wrong ideas, just engage the right ones.

Peter’s Heart Was In The Right Place
His Head Was In Another

In my last post, I made the point that Peter’s failure, the reason he denied Jesus, was ideological. He was invested in ideas that ran contrary to God’s plan.

Failure was guaranteed. The only plan that works is God’s plan. Changing the details is like rewriting the Bible.

People, Christian or not, don’t see it that way. A little modification here or there can’t be that bad. That’s what Peter thought but he might have something very different to say if he were here today.

Fortunately, Peter did recover. It wasn’t easy. He had to work through a bit of guilt and despondency but he got through it. The question is did Peter learn his lesson?

Yes, but it took a while.

What Jesus Planned

Jesus had a plan in eternity past, before the creation of the world. He knew exactly what would happen and what He would do and He did it.

He took on human form, He grew and developed in the way humans develop – except without sin, and died for the sins of the world.

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That wasn’t what Peter wanted but it was the plan. Jesus made the plan clear to the disciples but there’s no evidence the penny dropped until after He rose from the grave.

Allusions To The Cross

Early in Jesus’ public ministry, Jesus began making allusions to His death, burial, and resurrection.

  • After cleansing the Temple, Jesus said, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. (John 2:19)

He was talking about His body and the resurrection but no one caught on till after he rose from the dead.

  • He referred to being life up in the same way Moses lift of the serpant in the wilderness. (John 3:14)
  • He used Jonah’s experience to represent His burial and resurrection. (Matthew 12:39-40)

Instead of getting it, they were confused. It went right over their heads. [Read more…] about How Peter Learned Obedience