Roots by the River

The following was written 45 ½ years ago. It still applies. “Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns.” (Jeremiah 4:3) The Lord’s instruction to Judah through Jeremiah was spiritual instruction. He wasn’t speaking about farming. The Bible is wonderful in its clarity, and we can be awfully obtuse in our understanding. We do not operate like good farmers. We are like a three-year-old child who plants a bean and digs it up every day to see if it is growing. We have a Jack-and-the-Beanstalk view of sowing. We expect a giant plant the next morning. We are impatient for the harvest so we are impatient in our sowing. We sow in unplowed, undisced, and unharrowed ground. We sow in weeds. We sow in the rocks and on hard ground. We wonder why no harvest. The harvest is dependent on sowing, which is dependent onus. It is also dependent upon the ground. The kind of ground is, in a sense, dependent on us. “Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among the thorns” speaks of the ...

I am sending this out knowing that some of you have fibromyalgia. This was not in place of prayer. It was God’s answer to prayer in her life: “Reaching this point in my spiritual life enabled me about ten years later to marry a man whose work, I knew, would take both of us to new and unfriendly territory halfway around the world. Many people have asked me since that time how I could do it. The answer is simple: I have learned that I couldn’t. It is not about me and what I can or can’t do; it is all about what Christ can do. This move meant many unknowns, but then, God had me living like that for many years – in my own country . I am not an adventuresome person and not a risk-taker, and I am thankful for that, otherwise I might have doubted myself; “Am I really doing this for the Lord – or doing it for myself?” Because it’s not in my nature to take such a drastic step, I will gladly testify that it is the Lord’s hand. “Having come to a desert in a very out-of-the-way spot, one day G...

Here are a few scriptures that are not to be obeyed. They are not commands. They are to be believed. Your belief will be the major means of obedience to the adjacent commands. 1. “By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Romans 6:2) 2. “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” (Romans 6:6). 3. “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11) 4. “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God , the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.” (Romans 6:22) 5. “But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.” (Romans 7:6) 6. “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for yo...

Regularly I see people who have a tendency to be introspective. When I ask them if this introspection is an “upper” or a “downer” the answer is “a downer.” Then I ask them, “Is it accusatory or convicting?” The answer is “accusatory.” The accuser of the brethren is Satan. This introspection is not of God. Recently I read an account by Charles Finney speaking of himself in the 1820’s almost 200 years ago. “Sometimes I would pursue a wrong course in fasting, and attempt to examine myself according to the ideas of self-examination then entertained by my minister and the church. I would try to look into my own heart, in the sense of examining my feelings; and would turn my attention particularly to my motives, and the state of my mind. When I pursued this course, I found invariably that the day would close without any perceptible advance being made. Afterward I saw clearly why this was so. Turning my attention as I did, from the Lord Jesus Christ, and looking into myself, examining my ...

We all know that Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to give us forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. We can quote the verses. Here are other verses that tell us of other results of this wonderful salvation: “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” (John 2:1) “By no means! We are those who have died to sin ; how can we live in it any longer?” (Romans 6:2) “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” (Romans 6:6) “Now if we died with Christ , we believe that we will also live with him.” (Romans 6:8) “The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.” (Romans 6:10) “In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 6:11) “You have been set free from sin and ha...