(The following is a chapter from my book, My Close Encounter With Jesus Christ. You can order my book at any bookstore or from the home page of this website).

In recent years, there have been a number of movies and documentaries
and books that that have attempted to prove - or to at least raise a question
in the collective public conscience - that the Holy Bible is unreliable and not
a good source for historical information. These films, documentaries
and books all seem to embrace one central theme: that Jesus Christ was
not the only Son of God who was brought into the world to redeem it
from sin.

When Jesus Christ is depicted as simply a wise philosophical teacher who got married, had children, died and is buried in a graveyard, this stands in direct opposition to all of the central foundational truths of the Holy Bible.
What has concerned me most about these well-publicized attempts to strip deity away from Jesus Christ is that we are being bombarded with this type of material at the same time when many so-called “evangelical” Christian churches are not doing much preaching and teaching from the Bible. In many of the large churches catering to “seekers” and young people that I have attended, a large amount of pop psychology or a “feel good” emotional message will dominate the worship with an occasional token sentence of Scripture from the Bible thrown in for good measure.

I think it can be fairly stated that most contemporary sectarian Americans are Biblically illiterate. I recently saw on television a report that a poll indicated that more than 50 percent of Americans don’t know that Genesis is the first book of the Bible.

This should concern any Christian. But what has concerned me even more in recent years is the growing trend among Christians away from the centrality of the Holy Bible in their lives. I am often amazed when I talk to people who identify themselves as being Christians when I find out how little they know about the Scriptures and astounded when I learn that they seldom have even read the Bible.

When I asked Jesus Christ into my life as my Savior and Lord, I had many questions to ask my friend, Dann, and other Christians about my newfound faith. One day, I was struggling with a particular issue when I blurted out to Dann: “How can we know 100 percent that the Bible contains reliable information?”

Dann very calmly listened to my question and I can still remember his answer today just as he delivered it 30 years ago. “Jim,” he said. “Millions of people have lived their entire lives based upon this Book and they have gone on to heaven. Thousands of people have literally lost their lives because of believing what is in this Book, preaching it
and teaching it. Don’t you think that God, the creator of the universe, would
give us His Truth in a way that we could trust completely?”

Dann’s answer made complete sense to me and it has made sense to me
for more than 30 years.

But, beyond this issue of faith in the truth of the Bible, there are a multitude of reasons to believe that the Bible is reliable truth based upon pure human logic.

Had it been written as a fictional work from ancient days, the Bible would have been written much differently. Mythological stories of god-like heroes from 2,000 years ago portray the characters in mythic proportions of perfection and power.

But consider some of the main characters in the Bible. Most of them
are portrayed as flawed, sometimes weak, sometimes doubting, always as
human beings. Moses, the great leader of the Israelites in the Old Testament,
felt unworthy of his calling because he was self-conscious and apparently had
a stuttering problem and perhaps great anxiety about speaking in public.
In the New Testament, Jesus’ disciples are a ragamuffin collection of characters, sometimes downright laughable in their speech and behavior.
Peter, who had walked and talked with Jesus and who had seen Him
perform many miracles, denied that he even knew Jesus three times prior to
Christ’s crucifixion.

If the Bible is a book of fiction and unreliable as historical fact,
then Jesus would have not been depicted (Luke 22:42) as asking His
heavenly Father to release Him from the reality of the terrible, cruel
death that awaited Him. He would not have been depicted as being so
agonized that his “sweat became like great drops of blood falling down
to the ground.”

If the Bible was a book of fiction and unreliable as historical
fact, a woman, Mary Magdalene, would not have been depicted as the
first human being to discover that Jesus had risen from the dead.
(John 20:1). In the Jewish culture 2,000 years ago, women were
relegated to second-class status - often treated as children. A writer “making up” the story about Jesus being resurrected from the dead would have never
chosen a woman to be the first post-resurrection evangelist. Such a writer
would have known that having a woman in that role would have made the
chauvinistic men of that period doubt the integrity of the story.

The Holy Bible has stood the test of time and the scrutiny of thousands of scholars, archaeologists and other intelligent and learned people for many hundreds of years.

Now, if you are wondering why I have spent so much time in this chapter talking about the Bible, the Word of God, here’s the reason:

Many people sense emptiness in their lives and decide to see if this thing called “Christianity” can fill that void. They enter into the Christian faith primarily based upon emotional need and an expectation that becoming a Christian will bring peace into their lives.

These are certainly valid and rational reasons for taking that first step of faith (sometimes called a “leap of faith”) in the direction of Jesus Christ. But the problem that I have seen in over 30 years as a Christian is this: a majority of people who enter into Christian faith seeking solely an emotional balm don’t grow and mature in their faith
because they do not comprehend or accept the premise that reading and
understanding the Holy Bible is the absolute foundation for Christian growth.
They often want to construct their own ideas about what it is to be a
Christian based upon what “feels” right to them at the moment.

I once wrote a newsletter article that I entitled “Make Your Own
God.” In this piece, I used the concept of building a home computer set-up
as a metaphor for the tendency I have seen for many people to construct
a “god” as they want Him to be, rather than to know Him as He is.

When building a home computer, a person will add various
“components” to make the system perform the tasks he or she wants
it to perform. The person who “makes” his or her own god uses
his or her own “components” to create a god of their own making. As
an example of this, I have run into many theologically liberal people
(some of them even pastors) who do not believe that Satan and hell actually
exist. This, despite the fact that Satan and hell are mentioned hundreds of
times in the Bible and a multitude of times by Jesus Christ Himself. But
because the concept that there is an evil power in the world makes them feel
uncomfortable, these liberal theologians decide that they will leave this
“component” out of their belief systems.

Let me tell you very simply: if you do not base your Christian
faith upon trusting in the reliability of the Word of God, your faith will not
and cannot survive. To grow and mature in the faith, one must read the
Word of God regularly.

It is important to learn what the Scriptures say about the purpose for your
life. Base your faith upon its eternal truths. If there is something you don’t
understand, ask a Christian who has studied the Bible for many years or
simply pray for the Lord to reveal to you the meaning of the Scripture you
are reading.

Along with placing a centrality of the Word of God, the Bible,
in your life as a believer, do not neglect your relationship with God.
He wants to be your friend. He wants to be your confidante. He
wants to walk with you through the valleys in life as well as during the
good times.

The first step in establishing a relationship with Christ is to pray
and ask Him to come into your life, to take control of it, and to be your
Savior and Lord. But this is just the first step in a long process of faith.
Many people I know call themselves “Christian,” but seldom pray
(which is essentially just talking to God), seldom open a Bible, seldom
become involved in fellowship with other Christians. Using the metaphor of marriage again: What if you married your wife or husband in an elaborate wedding ceremony where you pledged your love and your life to your spouse and then the two of you went off on a romantic honeymoon together? But then, after returning home and
beginning the day-to-day process of living, your interest in your spouse
becomes casual and your time together becomes sporadic. What would be
the odds of that marriage lasting very long?

But yet, many people who call themselves Christians have
that kind of casual approach about their relationship with God. In many
respects, God seems mostly irrelevant to them from day to day as they go
about their normal routines. For many, they do not become aware of
how distant they have allowed themselves to become from God until a sense
of emptiness and depression begins to set in.

We are all only as distant from God as we want to be, because He is as
close to us as we want Him to be. James 4:8 says: “Draw near to God and He
will draw near to you.”

I have known many people who have professed interest in
Christianity based upon the idea that to become a Christian is like
joining a social club or a political movement. These people don’t generally last long in the faith because they often become disillusioned with other
Christians. This is because their focus has been on other people instead of
their own personal relationship with Christ.

Scripture tells us that friendship and fellowship with other Christians
is generally a good thing and something that we need in our spiritual lives.
But there is a balance even in this.

When I was a young Christian, I would try to be involved in
activities involving other Christians as much as possible. This was
overall a good and positive pursuit, but, in time, it began to
consume too much of my focus.

Finding myself alone and with no church activities scheduled became
a troubling experience for me, because I had not learned how to
be content alone with God and to enjoy His presence without being in a
crowd of Christians.

A Christian man who lived in Spain in the 16th Century, John of the
Cross, had no other choice than to learn how to make the most of being
alone with God. He, like many other Christians at the time, became
concerned about the materialism and fleshliness that had come into
organized religion. His rebellion against these values was reflected in
some pretty non-threatening behavior. He wore sandals instead of shoes
and lived very simply in prayer and much solitude.

But bucking “the system” eventually landed John of the Cross
in prison in Toledo, Spain. He was locked inside a dark six-by-ten-foot
cell for nine months. Most of the time, no light would penetrate into
his tiny cell.

Most of us (if we were to be thrown into a dark prison for doing
absolutely nothing wrong) would become bitter, vengeful and perhaps depressed and full of despair. But John of the Cross made the most of his time in his cell. He believed that not even the walls of that nasty place could separate him from the love of God.
John had many beautiful experiences and encounters with the Lord in those nine months, including his own personal “close encounter” with Jesus Christ. Later, he wrote deeply spiritual poetry about some of his experiences and the insights he gained during the time of his captivity.

Certainly, no modern-day American Christian would want to
spend nine months in a dark prison cell, but aren’t most of us really
in need of more time alone with God? The responsibilities and pressures
of 21st Century living tend to draw our focus elsewhere, but we need
to be “connected” to the One who says, “before I formed you in
the womb, I knew you.” (Jeremiah 1:5).

My “close encounter with Christ,” the true story of an event
more than 30 years ago, would not continue to have such relevance
in my life had I not stayed close to Christ every day through all of these
years.

Like every other human being, I run into trouble when I allow
my focus to stray too far away from God for too long. We’re not
supposed to go it alone in this world, left to fend for ourselves.

If I could leave you with one thing to think about after having read this book, it is this: God wants to be a part of your life. He loved you so much that He sent His only Son to die on a Cross so that you can have a relationship with Him both in this world and for
all eternity.

Jesus Christ is waiting with outstretched arms. But you must choose to come to Him, each and every day of your life.

I had my amazing and wondrous “close encounter” with Jesus many years ago, but my faith would have never been sustained through all of these 30-plus years - through all of the difficult trials and challenges of living in the modern world - if I failed to have daily “close encounters” with the One who saved my soul.

“Come to me, all you who labor and are heaven laden,” says the Lord in Matthew 11:28. “…..and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my
burden is light.”

Mark 13:13: “And you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But he who endures until the end will be saved.”

————————-

In many ways, I am beginning to see these words of Jesus being fulfilled in our American culture today.

There is a strong dimension of anger and hostility towards Jesus Himself threading its way through American music, film, art, poetry, television programs, etc.

Are we in what many experts are calling the “post-Christian era’ in America?  It certainly appears to be that way.

When I was a younger man, I knew people who were hostile to Christians - who they viewed as hypocritical, holier-than-thou, judgmental, inclined to preach more than to give and to love in Jesus’ Name.  Some of those criticisms were warranted.  Some of them weren’t.

But now, I have been seeing something much different. This is the actual hatred of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who sacrificed His life so that those who give their lives to Him can spend eternity in heaven.

I am an old man and I have seen a lot. But I have never seen anything like the hatred of Jesus I am seeing communicated in our American culture now.

Tell me, what in the world is there for anyone to hate about Jesus!? When He walked the face of the Earth He was love personified. He fed the hungry, healed the sick, gave hope to the hopeless. And, though He is not walking the Earth now, He is still doing all of these things for those who have faith in Him.

Particularly disturbing to me is reading articles about popular music groups who use their celebrity to write horribly blasphemous songs about Jesus.  Many of the popular anti-God music groups now have Biblical names which they derisively distort.

Before I came to accept Christ as my personal Lord and Savior in 1976, I had great respect for Jesus. I saw no fault with Him and considered Him to be a wise and good teacher. Even though at the the time I did not understand that He is the Son of God, I had absolutely nothing bad to say about the historical Jesus Christ.

But these are different times. Where does this hatred in our culture come from?  Simple answer: the devil himself! No one hates the person of Jesus Christ more than Satan.
Because when Jesus defeated death at The Cross, it spelled the beginning of the end for the devil.

So, as Christians, how do we try to counteract the growing hatred of Jesus in our American culture?  By being Christians who love and who express that love in tangible ways to those who don’t know Christ.  Also, we need to communicate to people the Jesus of the Holy Scriptures. Many people - especially young people - have very little real knowledge and understanding about Jesus Christ.  They’ve never cracked up a New Testament. They base their opinions about him on what their favorite heavy metal rock group has communicated to them about Jesus - which is distorted and untrue.

It’s amazing to think that after 2,000 years, there are so many who hate the One who laid down his life for all of humanity to make a way for us to experience heaven in the presence of God.   But the Jesus haters continue to rage on.  We need to pray for them; we need to love them; and we need to tell them the truth about the wonderful, loving Jesus those of us who are Christians know and love!

“Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”
1 John 5:21

When I was young I had many idols.

No, these idols weren’t anything like the idols in the Old Testament: golden cows, etc. These idols were human beings.

When I was in elementary school, I experienced my first major involvement in human idolatry. I idolized The Beatles.  As I grew older, I idolized a greater number of rock musicians, movie stars and other celebrities.

I was in my 20s when I came to Christ. Upon reading what the Scriptures said about the problem of having idols, I immediately began to work on that problem. But the thing was, my solution to this problem was to replace my sectarian idols with Christian idols. So, instead of having sectarian musicians as idols, I had Christian musicians as idols.

I started working as a newspaper reporter at about this time. Doing this work, I had occasion to meet many people who would be considered celebrities.  I soon discovered that though they were rich and famous and idolized by thousands, they were just “folks.”

In my youth I had many idols who were sports figures. One of them was Kent Benson, who helped lead Indiana University to the NCAA basketball championship in 1976.  Kent was the first pick in the NBA draft after his senior season.

Lo and behold, a major national magazine took me up on my offer to do a magazine article about Kent. At the time, he was living in a small apartment in Bloomington, IN., and, except for a fishing boat out in the parking lot, he had few of the trappings of fame and fortune.

I quickly discovered that Kent was/is just “folks.”  (though a very big “folk” at 6-10).  I enjoyed listening to him talk about his love for fishing and about his relationship with God and his Christian faith. Within 20 minutes of the interview, I forgot that I was talking with someone who had been my idol. We still keep in touch all of these years later.

In time, I began to meet many of my “Christian idols.” For the most part, they were different than I had imagined them to be. Like me, they had/have “clay feet” (which comes with being human) and some had/have very surprising human imperfections. One thing that amazed me when I began to meet my Christian idols is that many of them appear to be a bit antisocial. They don’t seem to like people very much. I imagine this comes from years of a having people want things from you, and want to have their picture taken with you, and want you to listen to all of their dreams and trials and tribulations.

The lesson in all of this is that God is not pleased when we make other people our idols - even Christian people. Having an idol of human flesh is to place that person between oneself and God.  The Lord wants nothing standing between Him and us.

God never tires of listening to our dreams and to our trials and tribulations. He’s never antisocial.  He is God and He never changes.

And, here’s something else to ponder: In the Book of Matthew, Jesus said He especially has a home in the lives of those He called “the least of these, my brethren.”  Christ also said that “the last shall be first (in heaven),” etc. etc.

My wife teaches severely mentally handicapped children. In God’s pecking order, they are much closer to His heart than all of our famous and wealthy human idols.

But no one asks for their autographs.

Book of John, Chapter 4

The Pharisees heard that Jesus was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John, although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. When the Lord learned of this, he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.

Now he had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans).

Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?”

Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

“I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”
————————————–

Today, I saw an interview on a PBS show with the great actor, Michael Caine. He has just made a new film that deals with many transcendent questions about life and living, death and dying, youth and old age. Caine, who is 76, had a very pleasant discourse with the interviewer about why he is certain that God exists.  Caine said that he knows that God exists because his life otherwise would make no sense. Born into a poor family in Great Britain, he lived among the struggling, cockneyed, working classes in England and the idea that someone from that background could go on to such international fame and fortune would have seemed  an outlandish aspiration when he was a child.

I don’t know much about Caine’s personal life, but I do know that he seems to have a pretty fair idea at age 76 of who he is. In our 2009 celebrity culture, it’s not often that celebrities seem to know who they are. In fact, in 2009 it is unusual for most people to even want to ponder that question.

“What difference does it make ‘who I am’?” I can  hear a young person responding. “I’ve got a cell phone, a game cube, a Blackberry, a sexual partner, plenty of time to party.
What else is there to know about me?”

When I was a young man, I really didn’t anticipate this era coming. In my generation, the Baby Boom generation, our own “youth culture” reflected a search for identity and a search to understand our place in the world.  This is why the music of that period is, ironically, enjoyed by many young people today. They know that their own culture is shallow and that most of the music of 2009-ish culture is intellectually and spiritually unsatisfying.

One of the more famous music  groups of the era in which I grew up was the English group, “The Who.” One of their more popular songs had the title, “Who are you?”  Yes, they were young at the time and they felt that this was a question well worth asking.

So many people I know apparently believe that the answer to that question in their own lives is “I am what I do.”  This is why you often hear one person asking another person upon meeting, “What’s your profession?’ instead of “who are you, really?” For many people, if they were to have their work stripped away from them, what would they have left of a self-image? Who would they then be?

The Scripture passage above is one of my favorite discourses in the Bible for many reasons.  But the primary reason I love this passage is that it tells us: (1). Who Jesus Christ is; and (2). How He sees us and how he wants us to see ourselves in Him.

Just the fact that Jesus took the time to talk to a Samaritan woman tells a story in itself.  Jesus was a Jew and the woman was a Samaritan - a class of people looked down  upon by Jews. But the social status of this woman meant absolutely nothing to Jesus. He viewed her as a child of the Living God, a human soul, a person of great value.

Just the fact that Jesus took time to talk to any woman tells a story. Women in Jesus’ time and culture were treated by most men as second-class citizens. If the Biblical writers had wanted to created this story when it didn’t exist, they would not have written about Jesus having such a conversation with a woman.

The episode opens with Jesus asking this woman for a drink of water.  This was His way of making the woman understand that He wanted to talk with her and get to know her. A Jewish holy man would have never stooped to asking a Samaritan woman for a drink of water.

It also opens up the way for Jesus to talk to the woman about truly spiritually transcendent  subject matter. Using the metaphor of water welling up to eternal life, He explained to her how that His very Presence contains spiritual life and refreshment of the soul and spirit.  And, more important, that the “water” which is Jesus’ Holy Presence is what she (and we) need to drink of in order to have eternal life.

Then, this Scripture account takes us to the “who are you?” part of the discourse. Jesus tells the woman to go tell her husband about what she has just heard and she responds that she has no husband.  She is trying to cover up the true condition of her life and of her heart.  Very probably, she hoped the conversation would end at that point.

But Jesus essentially “reads her mail” and tells her all about the sordid life she had been trying to hide from Him,  the Son of God.  But what Jesus had to say goes beyond the sinful life she had been leading. Jesus was essentially saying to that woman (and to every human being who would come after her) that there is nothing we can hide from Him. He sees everything and knows everything about us.  We can posture and cover up and try to pretend we are someone who we are not. And, in many cases, we can fool other people.

But, we can never  fool God.

The most powerful and amazing part of this discussion occurs at the end, when Jesus answers the woman in the affirmative that He is the long-awaited Messiah and the Christ.

So, now comes the original question posed by this column I am writing. How does one discover who he or she really is?

First of all, by coming to know God. Secondly, by realizing that what we do is not who we are. There is certainly a value in work and in what we do with our hands, but it is of limited value in light of our certain physical deaths and the reality of a looming eternity.

Thirdly, we discover who we really are by letting God strip away our “fakeness” and our pretentiousness and our covering-up  - in order to free us to be people created in His Likeness whose lives are characterized by loving and caring for others and of loving God with our whole hearts, minds, spirits.

Who are you?   Maybe today is the day to start asking yourself - and God - for answers to that eternally all-important question……

“For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.”

Psalm 139:13-16

The other night, I saw a television show on a Christian network in which experts, including a Princeton University professor, discussed recent decisions by the Obama Administration which will make abortion more accessible to people in other countries and which may open the door to human cloning for stem cell research purposes. Also, these experts said that a move is underway in our government to take away the right of individuals and hospitals to refuse to participate in activities such as abortion, etc., that they are opposed to on moral grounds.

One of the experts even went as far as to predict that Catholic hospitals may be forced to close down if the federal government tries to force them to offer the so-called “medical option” of providing abortions.

I imagine that some people who will read what I am going to write here will be quick to stereotype me as “one of those right-wing Republican Christians.” But let me tell you that this stereotype does not work with me. I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. There is a lot to dislike about both political parties. When I go to vote - and I do in every election - I vote for the man or woman I feel best about: not a political party.

However, I have to say very frankly at this point: I am very disappointed in the actions thus far of President Obama and his Administration in regards to “life issues” such as abortion and stem cell research on human embryos. With all of the problems we are facing as a nation right now, I certainly did not expect him to make a priority in his first days of office these decisions which will result in more unborn human beings being killed.

I have been a very public and outspoken advocate for the Right to Life for many, many years. In fact, I have even protested outside of abortion clinics carrying a sign and have been interviewed by the news media about why I was protesting in such a visible (and proactive) way.

During my 25-year newspaper career, I wrote multiple newspaper columns advocating for life and against abortion. I like to think that maybe something I have written or said over the years has influenced a mother(s) to spare the life of the growing child in her womb.

One of the aspects of the “Pro-Choice” movement that disturbs me most is how they change language to make abortion seem more palatable to the public. They call abortion “a medical procedure” and an issue of “reproductive health.”

Please excuse MY language, but this is baloney! Abortion is stopping a beating heart. It is killing a developing human being. It is an act of violence against that developing human being which results in his/her death.

I also become disturbed when I hear language such as “a woman’s right to choose” bandied about. But where is the “women’s right to choose” for the millions of developing young females who are torn from their mothers’ wombs during the heinous act of abortion?

Scientists and politicians debate whether the fetus feels pain during the act of abortion. There is plenty of evidence that even the fetus in first-trimester suffers pain. In many states, abortion is perfectly legal up to the point of birth. That is absolutely horrible to think about!
Though most abortions in America do take place in the first trimester, there are still thousands of unborn babies being destroyed when they have been developing for multiple months in the wombs of their mothers.

Now, the question arises: are all people who call themselves “pro choice” just basically heartless and evil folks? No, I don’t believe that at all. Many people have told me that they believe abortion is morally wrong, but that they don’t want women to be forced to compromise their physical health by getting “back-alley abortions” if abortion was to be made illegal (a reversal of Rowe vs. Wade).

I won’t deny that this could happen. But when we are talking about literally millions of abortions taking place across the world every year, the numbers of women who might be injured getting illegal abortions pales in comparison to the human life that is lost with current abortion laws in our nation and in other nations.

Tragically, some protestant Christian (using the term loosely) denominations either do not speak out against abortion or actually actively speak out for the “pro choice” position - such as the Disciples of Christ denomination which has its national headquarters in the state in which I live.

Recently, I was talking to the pastor of a Quaker church. If you know anything about the history of the Quaker movement, they have been historically pacifist - refusing to fight in wars or to use violence even in self-defense. But here is what this particular Quaker pastor told me: “We don’t take an official position about abortion in our church. It is up to each individual’s conscience.”

So much for “pacifism.”

Those of us who identify ourselves as Christians not only have to change the hearts and minds of those who call themselves atheists/agnostics, we also have to change the hearts and minds of many who call themselves “Christian.”

So, what should be our strategy?

1. Prayer. We should pray for God to change our president’s heart and mind on these life-related issues of abortion and stem-cell research on human embryos. When Abraham Lincoln took office, he did not strongly advocate a position to end slavery. But during his term, this changed. Lincoln drew closer to God because of the trials and tribulations of the Civil War. As a result, he freed the slaves

2. Continue to speak out, write, and find other ways to express your support for the right to life for unborn human beings.

3. Support pro-life organizations that help mothers through pregnancy and afterwards such as Crisis Pregnancy Centers, etc.

4. Write, call or personally tell your elected officials that you expect them to support measures which will protect human life - not end it.

Unborn children are the most helpless and vulnerable of all human beings. Our government protects many species of wildlife - including the eggs of eagles - but refuses to protect the lives of unborn human beings.
This, my friends, is a national disgrace!

(Author’s note: I do feel that I am equipped to write something worthwhile about subjects concerning marriage for two reasons: 1. I have a pastoral counseling degree from a Christian seminary; and 2. I have been happily married for 30 years. If you find this article useful, please send my website address along to anyone who could benefit from it - most especially young married couples or those considering marriage. Thanks! Jim Hall, A.A., B.A., B.A., M.S.).

Genesis 2:24

“Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.”
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One of my friends once commented to me about the reaction of his two 20-something daughters to a visit by me and my wife of 30 years, Mary.

“They really think you guys are a lot of fun,” he said. “They’re amazed at how much you guys laugh and joke and talk.”

This was a very nice compliment coming from my friend and I appreciated him sharing it.

It made me think about many of the homes I have visited where married people seem to be almost strangers inhabiting the same space. And, quite a few of these homes have been inhabited by married couples who are Christians.

These folks would talk to each other mainly in fragmented sentences and mainly about “functional” topics - “Do we need to get groceries tomorrow?” “Who is going to take Billy to his ball game tomorrow?” “Do you need any clothes washed tonight?” “We’ve got to fix that back door….it keeps sticking.”

But I would observe very little sharing and very little caring and especially very little laughing and smiling.

Odd, very odd.

My wife and I certainly don’t laugh and joke and smile and talk enthusiastically because our lives have been easy and idyllic. Far from it. Compared to most of the middle class people we know, our lives have been much harder than average. There have been major health-related problems and major financial problems, just to count a few of the myriad of trials and challenges. But we have always believed in the truth of the Bible teaching, “the joy of the Lord, is my strength.”

We have also learned that to have a healthy marriage has to involve real, truthful, honest communication - much more than a couple of people mutually coexisting. An atmosphere needs to exist in the home where everyone - including the children - are free to express how they feel (as long as they are respectful and not rude or aggressive).

Let me give you an example of what happens when this “feeling” communication is not practiced in a marriage:

A man came home from work and found his wife cleaning carrots. “I HATE the way you clean carrots!” he shouted. His wife, taken aback, could tell that there was more to her husband’s irritation than carrot cleaning. So, she responded: “John, what are you REALLY mad at me about?”

It turns out that John was really mad that his wife had said something a little bit insensitive about him the night before that hurt John’s feelings. But instead of expressing this at the time it happened, he repressed these feelings and let them build up inside.

Thus, World War III erupted the next day over carrot cleaning!

I am going to devote more to the issue of healthy communication between married couples in future articles here. In the meantime, talk to your husband or wife. Express to him or her how you are feeling. Don’t limit your conversations to commenting about sales at the discount store or how Bobby is going to get to his T-ball game tomorrow. Be honest, be open, be transparent with your spouse. This will help your marriage to not only just survive, but to thrive!

The Book of Romans 8:1
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
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I don’t know about you, but I have to deal with condemnation fairly frequently. This is mostly because I have chronic physical illnesses that other people don’t believe I should have. It’s as if they believe I am guilty personally for getting sick. They believe that I’ve done something wrong, so that is why I suffer with these afflictions.

Perhaps you don’t deal with condemnation for the same reasons I do, but for other reasons.  This world we live in is full of people who are inclined to condemn and to judge.

When I was a young man, I was too often guilty of this sin. As I often look back, I feel very sad about many of my own wrong attitudes towards others. I am so grateful that God’s grace covers this sin. Thank God, as I am growing older I am much less inclined to want to judge others.

When I meditate on the Scripture verse listed above, I think of what health departments do when they “condemn” buildings. Basically, they are saying that this building has become so defective that it can no longer be of use. They are also saying that this building will soon be destroyed because it can no longer be of use.

I can see a metaphor in this. When we condemn other people, we are saying that they are no longer of use to God and we are saying that they need to be “brought down.”  God forgive us!

Spend a few minutes today thinking about the freedom you have as a child of the Living God. There is no condemnation. We need to identify our sin and confess it to the Lord so that He can forgive us. But after that, it’s a done deal. No condemnation.

Let’s not walk in condemnation and let’s also not help to spread it around.

1 John 4:8
“Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”

This one sentence in 1st John is comprised of a relatively few number of words, but these words form a powerful statement to think about on many levels.

On one level, we see that if we are to identify ourselves as belonging to God, we must love. In fact, this Scripture says that love clearly identifies us as believers and as servants of the Lord.

Today, I have been thinking about the second message in the Scriptural sentence: …..“because God is love.”

Like many of you, life has given me many things to be very concerned about today.  And, like many of you, I have had to deal with worry today.

Over the 33 years that I have been a Christian, I have learned the best “antidote” for worry and fear can be found in this one powerful, potentially life-changing Scripture statement: “God is love.”

If God is love and if I am God’s, then why should I worry?  Isn’t God really in control?  If He loves me as this Scripture tells me He does, then can’t I be secure that He is looking out for me?

Ah, but we are human beings. As the Scripture says, “earthen vessels.”
And, there is a devil who likes to whisper into our ears that we cannot trust in the investment of God’s love into our lives. Sometimes, that “whisper” can become very loud - such as during this time when many of us are seeing our financial futures being put sorely in jeopardy by the present events in the world economy.

And, what about the beloved woman who has just been to the doctor today and has received a report from her doctor that she has breast cancer?  Can she feel secure in and trust in God’s love?

In my 33 years as a Christian, I have faced many very serious challenges in life and I have found that God has brought me through all of them. Things haven’t always turned out the way I expected or maybe even wanted them to turn out, but God is God and I am not. His ways are indeed higher than my ways.

Let’s all take some time today to thank the Lord for His great love and to commit our trust to Him.  He really does want us to trust in His love for us. He loves you today, He really does!

And Jesus has the scars to prove it.

Matthew 19:4-6 (New Living Translation)

“Haven’t you read the Scriptures?” Jesus replied. “They record that from the beginning ‘God made them male and female.’ And he said, ‘This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.’ Since they are no longer two but one, let no one split apart what God has joined together.”
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Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the approaching 30th wedding anniversary of my wife, Mary, and me. It’s only a few months away. She might jokingly tell you I’ve only been thinking about it because I’m trying to figure out how to scrape up enough money to celebrate it  (smile), But that’s not really true

First of all, let me get one thing straight: I do not deserve much credit for our marriage lasting 30 years. This goes to Mary. I am firmly convinced that she is the only woman on this planet who would have patience enough to put up with me for 30 years (smile again).

We have weathered many storms in these 30 years of marriage - health problems for both of us, financial stresses, unexpected job losses, some dreams not being fulfilled. And, I guess psychologists wouldn’t have considered us good candidates for a 30-year marriage since both of us come from very “dysfunctional” family backgrounds.

But we have made it this far and, if the Lord wills, maybe someday I’ll be writing a blog article about our 60th year anniversary.

To give you some idea of how long we have been married, consider that in 1979:

*The No. 1 song was the disco tune “Le Freak” and it was most often being played on vinyl records. There were no CDs or MP3 players back then.

*President Obama was 18 years old.

*Rocky II was one of the top-selling films of the year (there have been four Rocky movies since).

Today, I did a little looking on the internet and found that the average length of time that a marriage lasts now is only seven years. If that isn’t somewhat shocking to you, it sure is to me. Back when I was a youngster, very few of my friends’ parents were divorced. The vast majority stayed married for life.

People get divorced for a number of reasons. It’s not my job to judge or condemn anyone who has gotten a divorce.  Marriage isn’t easy. In fact, sometimes is downright hard. So, you won’t find me waxing self-righteous about managing to stay married for 30 years. However, I do think I am qualified to give a bit of advice about marriage.

1.  Love your spouse like Jesus loves us.  Jesus loves us so much that He was willing to suffer an agonizing death on the Cross so that we might have eternal life with Him.  While He was suffering on the Cross, Jesus was concerned about other people.

I have always been more concerned about Mary’s happiness and security than I have been about my own. She has always been more concerned about my happiness and security than of her own. The Bible calls this “dying to self.” This is the very nature of love itself.

2.  Let time pass to heal emotional wounds. When there are disagreements and arguments, don’t rush into destructive decisions in the heat of the moment.  Get some distance from each other for awhile, pray, and let time calm passions and help to heal wounds.

3. Be committed to the relationship for the long-haul.  Don’t let terms like “divorce” and/or “separation” enter into your conversations. God created the holy institution of marriage to last a lifetime (see above Scripture verses). If we view it any other way, we are being influenced by the devil himself.

4. Realize that though you are “one” spiritually in marriage, you are still two different individuals.  My wife will tell you that this has not been an easy one for me over the years. She has some hobbies and interests that I don’t share and sometimes I don’t give her the “space” she needs to pursue these interests (such as reading her romance novels- smile).

5. Accentuate the positive about your spouse.  Sometimes, we human beings can tend to focus too much on less desirable traits of another person and not enough on their positive traits.  We need to appreciate the good things about our spouses and not dwell on negatives that we may perceive in them.

Of course, I could go on and on with this, but maybe I’ll write more about marriage in the months to come.  One thing is certain: the destruction of marriages in our society has had a tragic impact upon families. It is sad for me to think about children whose parents will stay married “an average of only seven years” in 2009.

Love is never-ending. Marriage should be that way, too.

I know your works, and your labor, and your patience, and how you cannot bear them which are evil: and you have tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and have found them liars: And have borne, and have patience, and for my name’s sake have labored, and have not fainted. Nevertheless I have somewhat against you, because you have left your first love. Remember therefore from where you are fallen, and repent, and do the first works; or else I will come to you quickly, and will remove your candlestick out of his place, except you repent.  (Revelation 2:4-5).
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The other day I happened to flip the TV channel over to the sports network ESPN and saw a story that literally brought tears to my eyes.

It was about the mother of a famous NBA basketball player, Dwayne Wade.
Jolinda Wade was a hopeless drug addict on the mean streets of Chicago when she gave in to requests by a family member to attend a church service. In that church service, Jolinda had a “close encounter” with God that led her to turn over her life to Jesus Christ.

Now, Jolinda  Wade is “Pastor Jolinda Wade” and her famous son has just purchased a church building for his mother.

This was and is a touching and sometimes heart-wrenching story of God’s grace, mercy and redemption in the life of a woman and her family.

In my new book, My Close Encounter With Jesus Christ (which you can order from the “links” on my home page of this website), I tell of how I have become disturbed over the years to find that many so-called “evangelical” churches no longer preach and teach the simple, but powerful, message of God’s redemption  through the birth, life, death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But the pastor at the little storefront church Jolinda Wade was talked into attending wasn’t worried about being “seeker friendly” and watering down the Gospel message. He preached the powerful Word of God that night and Jolinda Wade accepted Christ as her Savior and Lord and now has a new life in Christ!

Jolinda’s story brought tears to my eyes because it reminded me of my own salvation and about others who have been brought out of a life of sin and self-destruction by the life-changing message of the Cross of Jesus.

There are so many distractions in living today that sometimes Christians can forget that our most important calling as believers is to share this great message of God’s redemption with other human beings. We should be motivated to want to share this message because we love other people, pure and simple.

At this point, you may be wondering what the Scripture verses  (above) have to do with Jolinda Wade’s story.  When I saw this on TV, I remembered back 33 years ago to the time that I asked Jesus Christ to become my savior and Lord.  Besides the obvious greatest value of testimonies like this - that people will come to Christ after hearing them - another value of these kinds of testimonies is that they can help to bring a believer back to contemplating his or her “first love.”

If you are married, do you remember how you felt during your engagement period?  You were absolutely consumed with love and affection for your soon-to-be spouse.  But after many years of marriage, there are times when many married people lose that consuming fire of love for one another. Those people who are committed to their marriages are able to weather these storms and their marriage relationships grow and mature. But, sadly, other marriages end up in divorce court when “first love” is lost.

The same dynamics can come to play in the life of a Christian who loses his/her “first love” passion for God.  Many of us remain committed to our relationship with God during challenging times of feeling distant from Him, but others gradually fall away from their faith.

If you are reading this and you recognize that may have lost your “first love” relationship with Christ, then be encouraged that all is certainly not lost: “Remember therefore from where you are fallen, and repent.” Spend some time alone with God and tell Him that you are sorry that you have let other things - many times the distractions and diversions and stresses of modern life - come between you and Him.

Come on home to Jesus Christ. He is waiting at the doorway with outstretched arms. He wants to be your “first love” once again.