Roots by the River

Here is another way. This time it is a prayer for the Christians at Philippi. “And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God. (Philippians 1:9-11) It is also by prayer with some differences.

There are better ways to obey the commands of God than try, effort or will power. Here is one of the ways: “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.” (Colossians 1:9-12) The Colossians end up having all of the characteristics simply because Paul had prayed for them to have them. They had no means of obeying them. They could not be filled with the knowledge of His will with all spiritual wisdom and understanding by any a...

Please pay clear attention to the words of Jesus. “If you love me, keep my commands...Whoever has my commands and keeps them is the one who loves me. The one who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I too will love them and show myself to them.” (John 14:15;21) “...and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20) Loving Jesus requires obedience to his commands. Discipleship requires obeying everything he commands his disciples. Here are a few of many commands: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13:34) “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” (Luke 6:38) “So do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'...

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, 'Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?' and I said, 'Here am I. Send me!' He said, 'Go and tell this people: 'Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.' Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed.'” (Isaiah 6:8-10) These few verses are quoted in the New Testament. The first is in Matthew 13 when Jesus says why he uses parables so that people would not understand. “This is why I speak to them in parables: 'Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand.' In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah: ''You will be ever hearing but never understanding; you will be ever seeing but never perceiving. For this people's heart has become calloused; they hardly hear ...

Sex in Marriage #2 In the Bible there is much indirect reference to sex, much of it having to do with procreation in marriage. “Adam made love to his wife Eve, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Cain. She said, ‘With the help of the Lord I have brought forth a man.’” (Genesis 4:1) “He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress.” (Genesis 16:4) “That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and slept with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up.” (Genesis 19:33) “Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him.” (Genesis 21:2) Women have two strong instincts: 1. To be a wife 2. To be a mother Sometimes the mother instinct is so strong that the woman will marry just to have children. The mother instinct may be stronger than the wife instinct. With men, they also have two strong instincts: 1....

When I was a very young man, premarital sex was not common among Christian women or women from Christian families. During the same time I spent four years in the Far East. When the ship was in port, whether it was in Sasebo, Yokohama, Hong Kong, Manila, or Subic Bay, the first several blocks from the dock were several hundred prostitutes. Officers and enlisted men both participated in the sex business. But back home there were few pregnancies and few abortions. If some young woman got pregnant or was known to be promiscuous, she was avoided by the saints. In the late sixties, I was Sunday School superintendent in a church in Maryland. One of the teenage Sunday School teachers got pregnant. I met with her and found that she was repentant and forgiven for her sexual activity. She was not guilty of being pregnant. Only God creates children. I allowed her to continue to teach. The church got upset with me for that decision. There have been over 50 million legal induced abortions performe...

Here are a few facts about Korea. It is about the size of Utah with 45 times as many people. The first movable printing type made of metal was invented there in the late 1300’s. A phonetic alphabet with 24 letters was invented in 1438. Other first inventions were armored warships in the 1500’s, marine’s compass and a suspension bridge. Only 22 percent of the land is arable.   Recent Political history: Japan’s influence in Korea became strong in 1895. In 1905, Japan took control of Korea’s foreign affairs. In 1910, Japan annexed Korea as part of Japan. This continued until August of 1945. After Japan’s surrender in World War II, Russia invaded Korea as far south as the 38th Parallel. North Korea invaded South Korea in June of 1950. This was continued for an even three years, at which time a truce was signed but there has never been a peace treaty. The two nations are still at war 60 years later. Total military casualties dead, wounded, and missing for South Korea , United States, a...

In 1958 I became acquainted with J.C. Ryle. We received an anonymous gift of three one dollar bills from Lancaster, PA. Also in the envelope was a tract on Hell by bishop Ryle. Many years later while ministering in Taiwan, I was given a picture of J.C. Ryle with his own signature on the picture. More years went by when here in Moscow, a man was publishing hard back books of all of J.C. Ryle’s writings. I gave the man the picture with the autograph. He was grateful. I received free new books. This is an excuse to quote two quotes by J.C. Ryle on zeal. “It may be very true that wise young believers are very rare. But it is no less true that zealous old believers are very rare also.” – J.C. Ryle, Practical Religion, p. 147 “A zealous man in religion is pre-eminently a man of one thing. It is not enough to say that he is earnest, hearty, uncompromising, thorough-going, whole-hearted, fervent in spirit. He only sees one thing, he cares for one thing, he lives for one thing, he is swal...

Beginning on Saturday, January 17, at 2:00 PM there will be a prayer meeting in my home. The primary reason for the prayer meeting is to intercede for the saints in Pullman-Moscow area, to get them back to their first love. The second reason is to ask the Lord of the harvest to send reapers into the harvest for the harvest is plenteous and the laborers are few. I and a few others are seeing the moving of the Spirit in regular conversations of men with no previous knowledge of the Gospel. If you are in range of my home, 114 South Howard St. Moscow, ID we encourage you to come. We do not want to run ahead of God nor do we want to run to catch up. We want the Holy Spirit to come down on every resident in the community. That is what happened in Jerusalem in Acts 1 and 2, in modern times in Wales 1904-1905, Korea 1907-1910, and New York City on Fulton Street in 1857. We will spend an hour together in prayer. Also on January 17 at 3:15 PM I will start an eight week teaching on personal e...

Community Christian Ministries has been in ministry in college towns since 1971. One of the main evangelistic efforts has been with God-called people working in and out of Christian bookstores. Because of the lack of enough evangelistic men or women, we have closed or given to other ministries seven of these ministries. We are still active in four university towns: Gunnison, CO; Logan, UT; Moscow, ID; and Pullman, WA. We are short of staff in all of those locations. We are looking for people who would like to join in this evangelism. If you have a heart for the Great Commission we would like to train you, unless you are already equipped. The evangelism will be mostly personal, not mass. The training would be in friendship and literature evangelism. This would be personally taught by Jim Wilson. There will be teaching on instant contact with unbelievers. There will be opportunities to put this teaching into effect. This training will be at Jim Wilson’s house, twice a week, beginni...

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...

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery. But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28) “But among you there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed, because these are improper for God’s holy people. Nor should there be obscenity, foolish talk or coarse joking, which are out of place, but rather thanksgiving.” (Ephesians 5:3-4) This sin, both kinds “looking and “talking”, is pandemic in the world and epidemic in the church. “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. It is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible—and eve...

“Get rid of all bitterness, rage and anger, brawling and slander, along with every form of malice.” (Ephesians 4:31) “But now you must also rid yourselves of all such things as these: anger, rage, malice, slander, and filthy language from your lips.” (Colossians 3:8) Wrath and anger and obscene speech have no place in a Christian’s life. I know a pastor who is guilty of anger with his child. I also know he does not discipline his children. The children are wild. “He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)” (I Timothy 3:4-5) “An elder must be blameless, faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient. Since an overseer manages God’s household, he must be blameless—not overbearing, not quick-tempered, not given to drunkenness, not violent, not ...

“Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.” (Colossians 3:21) “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4) Have you ever been exasperated or been provoked to anger by your father? If “yes” then that is saying that your father was in sin. Have you exasperated your children or provoked them to anger? Then you are in sin. This sin must be confessed and forsaken.

“So ought men to love their wives as their own bodies. He that loveth his wife loveth himself. For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as the Lord the church.” (Ephesians 5:28-29, KJV) “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.” (Ephesians 6:4, KJV) Notice the difference between your wife and your children. Your wife is to be nourished and cherished. Your children are to be nurtured and admonished. Both are to be nourished. Wives are to be cherished Children are to be admonished Wives are not to be admonished . Suppose my wife needs to be admonished . There is a way to admonish people. “He is the one we proclaim, admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom, so that we may present everyone fully mature in Christ.” (Colossians 1:28) Admonishing is done with all wisdom , to present everyone perfect in Christ. Husbands do not do it with all wisdom and it does n...

Over the years I have gotten to know men, not a few, who were apparently outstanding Christians in their churches and cities who had major sins that no one suspected that they could have been guilty of. For some reason I found out and ministered to them, but was only partly successful with a few of them. The next few posts be on their sins. I do not think all of you are guilty but I know some of you are. If the church does not know, God knows and your wife and children probably know. How Do You Treat Your Wife? “Husbands, in the same way be considerate as you live with your wives, and treat them with respect as the weaker partner and as heirs with you of the gracious gift of life, so that nothing will hinder your prayers.” (I Peter3:7) You are to live with your wives 1. in an understanding way 2. as with someone weak, since she is a woman 3. So that your prayers will not be hindered. Are your prayers hindered? Are you imitating Jesus? “Husbands, love your wives and do not...