DEALING WITH GENERATIONAL SIN ISSUES
Greetings in Jesus:
In my mind, over the last several years I have often wondered what the most effective tool to help spread the truth of the Gospel was. Realizing that Jesus began to use parables toward the middle and the end of His ministry I have thought a lot about trying to create story lines that would continue to uphold the truth I was trying to speak in the Spirit of God. Unfortunately, I am not smart enough to really do that effectively.
The best I can produce for you is to recall realistic times within my own life when I have mostly failed to follow God's lead and then had to learn the lessons taught from a point of loss in my life. There have been many such instances which is the main reason for some 20 plus years now I have written as the unworthy servant. I had many different things to deal with in my life that I had not known about because of ignorance or because of the misplaced faith I had in people in general. My own family was among the darkest pits I had to crawl back out of. For a small child having faith in one's father and mother is among the most critical things to have in growing up.
I started out having that kind of faith, and in believing that my family was good and honest. Even without the help of any true Christian principals or church attendance God still reached down to my brother and me to try to pull us both free from the bondage that our family had lived under for only God can know how long. What I did not know when it all started was how deeply the generations of my family would be found entrenched in Satanic practices and would be found to be given over to practices of lude and sinful behavior.
Most of this still very painful for me to deal with even at the tender age of 70. There is much within this journey, however, that is relatable to a few who have perhaps found themselves feeling on the outside looking in when it came to the things of Christ. It is that feeling that causes many Christians to no longer participate within the church. It is a feeling that somehow they are more unworthy of being a part of the joy and peace of the Christian community than others. While this feeling is very strong and could be very personally true to these people, we must also realize that we all have been in the same state of disobedience, sin, and selfishness in this world. We could not escape the looming judgment over our heads by ourselves but needed Christ's love, mercy, and forgiveness to stand in our place. In my personal case, God reached down into the depths of the sin that I was raised in to bring me out because he saw something in me that desired him more than I desire the world.
To us, in this life, there is no physical understanding of God's mind in loving one person so much as to reach down into the muck of the world, and pluck one soul out to hold in his hand and never let go. Along with that redemption, there has been a great price to be paid. In order for me to maintain a relationship with God I had to go through a tremendous transformation in character, and in who I thought I was a man. I have been personally taught many lessons about the value of life through the things that we cling to and are told are of the most value; to the lives that surround us and the basic social attitudes that are thought of as good and righteous. Almost every lesson I had been taught by my earthly parents had to be amended by God's spirit in some way. The real problem for me was that I didn't even realize there was anything wrong with me. I did not understand how wickedly I had been deceived by the world around me. It was not my parent's fault, for they had grown up in the same way they had raised me and my older brother. The difference was in the calling to my heart to the truth of God, and what I was going to have to deal with in my life to change the man I was. I want to take the time to deal with this issue in more detail as the week progresses, but for now make you richly bless God to your life in him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
In my mind, over the last several years I have often wondered what the most effective tool to help spread the truth of the Gospel was. Realizing that Jesus began to use parables toward the middle and the end of His ministry I have thought a lot about trying to create story lines that would continue to uphold the truth I was trying to speak in the Spirit of God. Unfortunately, I am not smart enough to really do that effectively.
The best I can produce for you is to recall realistic times within my own life when I have mostly failed to follow God's lead and then had to learn the lessons taught from a point of loss in my life. There have been many such instances which is the main reason for some 20 plus years now I have written as the unworthy servant. I had many different things to deal with in my life that I had not known about because of ignorance or because of the misplaced faith I had in people in general. My own family was among the darkest pits I had to crawl back out of. For a small child having faith in one's father and mother is among the most critical things to have in growing up.
I started out having that kind of faith, and in believing that my family was good and honest. Even without the help of any true Christian principals or church attendance God still reached down to my brother and me to try to pull us both free from the bondage that our family had lived under for only God can know how long. What I did not know when it all started was how deeply the generations of my family would be found entrenched in Satanic practices and would be found to be given over to practices of lude and sinful behavior.
Most of this still very painful for me to deal with even at the tender age of 70. There is much within this journey, however, that is relatable to a few who have perhaps found themselves feeling on the outside looking in when it came to the things of Christ. It is that feeling that causes many Christians to no longer participate within the church. It is a feeling that somehow they are more unworthy of being a part of the joy and peace of the Christian community than others. While this feeling is very strong and could be very personally true to these people, we must also realize that we all have been in the same state of disobedience, sin, and selfishness in this world. We could not escape the looming judgment over our heads by ourselves but needed Christ's love, mercy, and forgiveness to stand in our place. In my personal case, God reached down into the depths of the sin that I was raised in to bring me out because he saw something in me that desired him more than I desire the world.
To us, in this life, there is no physical understanding of God's mind in loving one person so much as to reach down into the muck of the world, and pluck one soul out to hold in his hand and never let go. Along with that redemption, there has been a great price to be paid. In order for me to maintain a relationship with God I had to go through a tremendous transformation in character, and in who I thought I was a man. I have been personally taught many lessons about the value of life through the things that we cling to and are told are of the most value; to the lives that surround us and the basic social attitudes that are thought of as good and righteous. Almost every lesson I had been taught by my earthly parents had to be amended by God's spirit in some way. The real problem for me was that I didn't even realize there was anything wrong with me. I did not understand how wickedly I had been deceived by the world around me. It was not my parent's fault, for they had grown up in the same way they had raised me and my older brother. The difference was in the calling to my heart to the truth of God, and what I was going to have to deal with in my life to change the man I was. I want to take the time to deal with this issue in more detail as the week progresses, but for now make you richly bless God to your life in him.
THE UNWORTHY SERVANT
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