Guitar Jim

Q23. (Romans 8:28-30; 1 Peter 1:1-2) I realize that this is a mystery, but how do you see God’s foreknowledge working alongside his ability to predestine? If all this is by grace, how might faith and/or good works fit into this predestination? I've struggled with trying to understand predestination and God's foreknowledge for as long as I've been a Christian. OK, God knows ahead of time who will accept Jesus as their Saviour, and then after they become Christians, the good works they will perform in His Name. That's a kinda paraphrase of how predestination and foreknowledge are supposed to work in a Christian's life, right? As I understand it from my own experience, that's the working theory. Life has dealt me many crushing blows. For starters we need to look at my childhood. I had an abusive father who would use any excuse to inflict pain upon me right from infancy through to when he discovered that he could no longer hurt me, in my early teens. Those thousands of beatings . . I kid you not. at every evening meal he'd punch me in the head just for burping during the meal; an involuntary biological process that all humans do, no matter how cultured they try to be. I suffered awful indigestion from trying to hold in the burps, and eventually just stoically accepted them rather than endure hours of indigestion trying to avoid them . . caused me to suffer what is known as "footballer's migraine", or continual concussion caused by repeated blows to the head from which the sufferer could not recover from one hit to the next due to the frequency of the trauma. I didn't eat my greens from age five. What I remember to be the moment in my life that actually started it was when I puked at the dinner table from choking on a bean string. It got stuck in my throat and made me gag till I puked. Whether my father hit me for that I don't remember, but at that very moment the biggest fear in my life became puking from eating greens. I became so pathologically afraid of eating vegetables that I would endure beating after beating rather that eat the veges and risk the consequences my phobia had me believe would occur. For the most part, my parents just didn't put vegetables on my plate, but every now and then they would. I wasn't allowed to eat the food I did like, the meat and potatoes, until I'd eaten the food I didn't like, the peas or beans, and the pumpkin. Despite my trying to explain that the vegetables were gonna make me sick, my father took great delight in beating about the head and body until I hit the floor, then putting the slippers into me while I was on the floor. Then I'd be told to leave the table (or the floor beside the table, more likely) and go to my room. To add to that, a few minutes later my father would come into my room and give me an even more brutal beating to "give me something to cry about". About the worst example of that treatment happened on my ninth birthday. We got home from Sunday School and Mum had prepared a roast chicken for lunch for my birthday. Sadly, she'd put peas and pumpkin on my plate. When I started pushing them aside she told me to eat them first, then I'd appreciate the roast chicken and roast potato all the more after eating what I didn't like. But it was more than not wanting to eat what I didn't like. In my mind I'd be risking illness if I ate them. Anyway I received the customary punch in the head and got sent to my room with no lunch. A couple of hours later Mum came in and asked me if I was hungry. I said yes. She said she'd warmed up my lunch if I wanted to eat it so it began a second time. I started to cut up a piece of roast potato and she stopped me from doing that and told me to eat some pumpkin instead. I hesitated, hoping she'd relent, but no. Then my father came up the back stairs and asked if I was eating my vegetables. When Mum said no, he flew into a rage, raced over to where I was sitting at the table, grabbed me by the ears, and pushed my face into my food. Then he repeatedly bashed my face into the table many times. After that he grabbed me by the head and proceeded to drag me downstairs, bashing my head into the railing all the way down. Once downstairs he punched the daylights out of me with blows to my head and body until I went down. Then he began to kick me to my body over and over for some time, until my mother came downstairs and begged him to stop before he killed me! He said he wanted to kill me because he hated my guts and didn't even care if he got jailed for doing it. "At least I'll be alive and he'll be dead!!" That was far from being the first time I'd heard him say those words. It was almost like his mantra! Anyway, Mum dragged him off me and told him to go for a walk down to the park to cool down. I saw my chance and ran for my life under the house, right up to where the house was only just off the ground. We lived on a sloping block. I hoped and prayed he wouldn't be able to reach me up there. Mum began talking to me through the battens, telling me that this was the first argument she ans dad had ever had, and that it was my fault for not eating my veges. She coaxed me out and told me to just stay in my room for the rest of the day and night. So I got no dinner, and no presents for my birthday either, making it the worst birthday ever. So why do I relate this tale? Well . . a few months prior to this all happening we'd had an evangelist come to our church for the combined Boys and Girls Brigade monthly Sunday evening service. He preached the Gospel and I quietly, under my breath, repeated the prayer he'd asked us to pray. I was too scared to even put my hand up when he asked for those who'd prayed the sinner's prayer, and I realise that may have been a mistake. But I'd accepted Jesus to live in my heart just the same, and I felt the tingle, the quickening, that one gets when they fell the Holy Spirit's presence come into their lives. Even before turning nine years old I was very aware that Jesus' Spirit was indwelling me. I was careful not to cuss, even in my mind, and to not tell a lie, and in general live a life worthy of God's calling. Then my birthday from hell happened. From that day, when I realised my father just may have killed me if not for my mother's intervention . . the ONLY time she ever intervened before or since that say I might add . . I'd had a deathly fear of him and began to hate him. Now, I didn't want to grieve the Holy Spirit, but I really wanted to cuss my guts out at my father for being the monster that he surely was. So I asked Jesus to leave my heart so I wouldn't upset him by using foul language. Then I let loose with every cuss word I knew, venting my spleen against my father for not only that beating, but for all the hundreds of beatings he'd inflicted upon my head and body since before I could even remember! Many beatings were done in public, when something would set him off and he'd fly into a rage and flog me in front of everyone at the park, the beach, the shopping center, anywhere at all really. People would try to talk him down, to make him stop, but he'd bellow at them to mind their own business and let him "beat this b*****d to death because he hated me enough to kill me." After a few days had passed I humbly and repentantly asked Jesus to come back into my heart, but this time I felt no quickening, no feeling at all that could give me an assurance that I was a Christian once more. So, my question is this . . Many are called, but few are chosen. That verse has been screaming in my brain for sixty years! Here's the rub: I went to Church, Sunday School, Christian Endeavour, Boys Brigade, everything that was on at our church. But I felt like the outsider looking in. Then in January 1971 my friend and I joined the Baptist Youth Fellowship Rock Choir. It was a sincere attempt to try and make the most reformed denomination around appear more hip and appealing to teenagers. I had long hair, a weightlifters build, a singing voice as good as Art Garfunkel, and was generally viewed as being cool, so the folks in charge of BYF thought it'd be a good idea to use me as an example of being a Christian and still being cool. Of course they didn't ask me if that was OK with me. You see, any time anyone asked me how long I'd been a Christian, I'd tell 'em "about six months". One of the older teenagers (I was just shy of 17 at the time) on the BYF Easter camp in 1971 took me aside on the Saturday night and asked me directly if I was really a Christian. I told him not really. So he asked me if I wanted to become a Christian and I said yes. So he led me to Jesus right there, outside our hut at the camp. He told me there'd be a Gospel service the following night and that I should go forward when the invitation was given and explain that he'd led me to Christ the previous evening. So I went forward, and the group of counsellors saw me do that and figured I'd come to help with the counselling, so they sent me back to be with my friends because they had things covered there. So, again, I didn't get counselling. In fact I never had counselling right up until eleven years later when I'd been an apostate for ten years, and bumped into another guy from the old BYF who was now a Reverend, and he lovingly led me back out of the cold to become a full-on Christian. He held the counselling classes himself and made sure all us newbies received God-given counselling. He and I became firm friends from that time on. But I never felt any callings on my heart to undertake any kind of ministry. I had always lifted weights and by this time I'd become a competitive Powerlifter. My Pastor asked me to participate in a Christian Sportsperson service in which he interviewed me and I did a brief strength demonstration along with that. That actually opened the door for me to be kinda accepted by the church body which was nice. Then came the requests to coach one of the soccer teams, which I declined because I didn't know the first thing about soccer! I had to explain to them that I needed to train in the evenings because I worked full time as a truck driver through the day. I made no secret of the fact that I was a Christian when I went to Powerlifting and I did my utmost, with God's help, to live an upright life. But my witnessing was brought undone when the president of Powerlifting in my state, and a very close friend of mine, was found out to be a paedophile by his wife. He'd been interfering with their three-year-old daughter!! Even though his wife promised not to reveal that to any of us, he quickly realised that I'd figure things out in no time because I had this whole father-confessor thing happening, and his wife had come back to Christ after her hubby and I became friends and she and my wife became close as well. So he came up with a cover story to deflect any heat he may have drawn if anyone found out his wife had licked him out for incest. The story went that I'd recruited his wife to an extremist Christian cult, and when he wouldn't convert, the cult made up the paedophile-incest story to keep him from contacting her and their daughter, and that I was in on all that. Every friend I had in Powerlifting shunned me for "breaking up their leader's marriage". There went eleven years of Christian witnessing down the gurgler. His wife is still the only person I've led to Christ. Every time I get something good going, it gets derailed . . no, no derailed so much as completely and utterly destroyed. In 1997 my job and career as a truck driver got finished when I tore some tendons in my gear-jammin' arm. But that opened the door for me to use my considerable skill as a Blues-Rock guitarist to forge a new career. After intense counselling from the associate Pastor at Church, I felt I was doing God's Will and so I threw myself into that and worked in the music industry full-time for 25 years. But after 23 years my bad back decided to let me down completely and utterly, and I was unable to keep gigging full time. The only gigs I was able to do were the Biker gigs, where the guys would help me with my gear, loading in and out. But even that was taken from me in 2021 when my hands stopped working properly, making it impossible for me to play guitar worth spit. There is no cure for that and nowadays I just mope around my apartment waiting to die. Many are called, but few are chosen. I was just starting to make headway into the dark Godless world of the biker community when this final unbearable blow hit me. Now my mantle has been taken by another guy, a phony friend who back-stabbed me when my wife and I split up; a man with a tiny fraction of the talent I had is now doing ALL the gigs I'd be doing if I was still whole. But I'm seriously broken and an atheist has taken over my job. The devil is behind all this, as he undoubtedly was behind everything that has prevented me from serving Christ. I was bullied out of an education at high school and after 18 months of that I finally snapped under the strain of it and put the leaders of the two gangs responsible for the bullying in hospital, to make it stop. So, no witnessing possible at school. At every job I worked things invariably went sideways and I was marginalised to the point where no witnessing was possible at work. In the music industry I rose to the top as far as raw talent went, and was demonised by the evil people who run the industry so as to prevent me from making any headway at all. Their increasingly sinister lies they told to stop me from getting hired eventually escalated to them calling me a sexual deviant and a rapist!! Of course nothing was ever written down; it was all verbal, and I can never prove any of it. The pub manager who told me all the things they were saying has moved interstate and out of the hotel industry, so no one can attest to anything. So no witnessing possible as a musician. So here I am at 69 years old. Nothing to show for 50 years of being a Christian, to some extent or other, but the last 40 years I've never fallen away. Many are called, but few are chosen. Could it be that I was called, but missed the cut? Could my not being chosen be the reason I've never had victory in my life? Could that rash decision when I was nine have killed off my chances?

Q1. (Acts 9:4-5; 26:14) Why does persecuting Christ's people constitute persecuting Christ himself? Jesus Himself said that what we do to the least of His people, we do to Him. What kinds of goads or prods have you seen God use on you to move you along Christ's path? God has been pretty brutal to me when it comes to goading me to follow Him. I rebelled for ten years after I'd been a Christian for just two years. The lure of secular acceptance and wanting to be one of the crowd saw me wilfully go my own way from 1973 to 1982. In 1982 I developed agoraphobia which completely ruined my life in every possible way. I had to quit my job because I couldn't even think about leaving my house without uncontrollable gagging and retching. However I got help from my doctor who prescribed me tranquillisers to help control that to an extent. One day I was walking through a shopping mall and encountered a man I'd known from back when I first became a Christian and he since become a Reverend and a Pastor. He invited me to Church and I went because of an increase in the intensity of the agoraphobia. He led me back to Jesus. Did God then take away the agoraphobia? No, he didn't. It became the thorn in my flesh for decades. I had to drug myself up just to go to work. Then some health problems started happening which nearly killed me. A tumor destroyed my pituitary gland in the mid 1980s and that further eroded my once robust health. God was teaching me dependence upon Him by making me rely on Him for sufficient health to function. In the early 1990s I came good to a large extent when I became a father. I enjoyed several great years of seemingly abundant health. Then because of the hard physical nature of my job, I started to break down physically. In 1997 the work injuries culminated in my being pensioned off onto the Disability Support Pension. At that time I was advised by everyone who knew me to make my hobby of guitar playing into a backup income by turning professional. When I say "everyone", I mean everyone except my pastor, who wanted me, instead, to drive taxis. I considered him an idiot in many ways. He'd become Australia's youngest Reverend and Pastor at just 21 years old. He hadn't held down a job in the secular workforce, so I didn't think him qualified to advise me in that regard. I wasn't alone in that viewpoint. So I launched myself off into unknown waters and have been doing the professional musician thing for 22 years with nothing but my faith in God to sustain me. To say I've had ups and downs in the music industry would be akin to saying Hurricane Katrina was a summer shower! My musical career has cost me my marriage, my relationship with my daughter, and every friend I ever had. Yet all this time I've still been getting signs from God to keep going at it. There have been times when I wondered if I was on the right path . . I mean I play in licensed venues where alcohol is sold and it's my job to keep the people there for longer than they'd stay if I wasn't there. I asked a wise Christian about this and he said that I was the only Gospel those lost people were probably ever gonna read. When I go to work I'm the sole light burning in a sea of darkness. If I was just playing Christian music in Church, I'd be playing to the saved, not to the lost. Mind you, I play secular music exclusively. I applied to join the Church band but was rejected for being to hard core and rocky . . at 63 years old at the time! My "ministry", if such it could me called, happens during my breaks when I go and sit with the people who have been the most appreciative of my show. It's in those conversations that the Holy Spirit works on them by my allowing Him to have his way in the way these people perceive me. I'll never know this side of Glory how much effect, if any, I've had on them. I just humbly do my job and let God take care of how my doing that impacts my audiences. I'm possibly and probably the best in Australia in my genre, but I work independently of the major players, movers, and shakers in the industry and consequently I have to work in out of the way country hotels and clubs, as well as biker functions. Those big booking companies have been trying to exterminate me for years now. Even in this, I see the hand of God keeping me down and keeping me humble. I get my daily bread and hardly a crumb more. These people who control almost the entire music industry are of particular despicable character; they're control freaks; they're actual criminals in the way they do business, holding back the money paid to the musicians for their own financial gain. I'm well rid of them, but it's really hard for me to get enough work, especially now that I've turned 65. When you "kick against the goads" is it harder on you or on God? I'm gonna have to say it's harder on me. God has piled up on me many hardships, physical and mental, that I assume He's using to build my character and to increase the level of sanctification in me. Sometimes it becomes so overwhelming that I break down and beg God to please take a break from building my character just for today so I can go to work and do my job!

Q1. (Daniel 7:13-14) What attributes does the “one like a son of man” have in Daniel’s prophecy? In what ways does this personage possess divine elements? What authority does he have? How do we know that Jesus identified himself with this Son of Man in Daniel? The Son of Man was given authority, glory and sovereign power. Even in this pre-existent state the Son of Man had the appearance of a human being, hence his description in Daniel. He was given dominion over everything and everyone. We have to understand that these visions Daniel was having were terrifying and difficult to comprehend. Daniel had these visions hundreds of years before Jesus was born. There was no teaching in those days of the Trinitarian Godhead. In Daniel's day people only worshipped and feared God as their deity. The idea of God existing as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit was completely foreign to everyone on Earth. Daniel's vision of a Son of Man (again this was Daniel's way of describing someone almost indescribable) was a completely new revelation from God. Now for the first time we see that there is another in Heaven with authority to rule over everything. For whatever reason, God has chosen to bring about His Kingdom according to a Divine timetable. Firstly God chose a man, Abraham, to father a nation that would be called God's chosen people. Then, after centuries of captivity in an earthly kingdom, God chose a man, Moses, to lead His people out of captivity into the Promised Land. Then, after centuries of confusion God chose a man, David, to become the king after God's own heart, to rule His people. Then, after centuries of His people going astray and being conquered by an earthly kingdom, God sent a man, the Son of Man, to usher in a new and everlasting Kingdom. But there again, God had a timetable. His Kingdom is advancing slowly, giving everyone on Earth time to hear the Gospel of Christ and respond to it. I understand all this to mean that the powers aligned against God by Satan after his fall have power, granted under God's sovereign control and also subject to His timetable, to rule this world for a definite number of years. For whatever reason, God has made things happen in this way, rather than just obliterate all opposition to His dominion. Through His Son, Jesus the Messiah, God will conquer all His enemies and bring about the fruition of His Kingdom with Jesus being the Conqueror in the final battle. Now I know I've just summed up the whole Bible here, but that's the big picture. We have Jesus introduced in Old Testament prophecy and given flesh in the New Testament Gospels. While He was on Earth Jesus used the title first given Him by the prophet Daniel, which is fitting if you think of it in that way.

Q4. (Joshua 9:14; 7:1-5) How did Joshua’s failure to consult God before making decisions hurt Israel? The times Joshua failed to consult God before going into battle resulted in defeat. Although he had no idea at the time, the things Joshua did were being recorded for posterity to teach everyone who reads them right up to today and beyond. The same is true for everything in the Bible. It's all there for a reason. We today need to include seeking God's direction when making our plans. How did Jesus model close communication with God before making major decisions? Jesus prayed all the time. Often He'd be up all night praying when He needed the Father's help with an important mission the next day. What does it take for us to hear God’s voice or to get confirmation from God for a course of action? My old pastor, the man who led me to Christ in 1982, had a four-step method for discerning God's will. If you're planning to do something, be it a decision about ministry, a change in employment, anything at all . . he advised me to follow the four steps. 1. Is it Biblical? . . Does the Bible have anything in it that speaks against what you're planning to do? Does the Bible confirm that what you're thinking about is in line with Biblical principles? If the Bible speaks against your planned course of action, then don't do it. If what you're planning lines up with Bible teaching and/or If the Bible appears neutral on your planned course of action, go to step 2. 2. Seek the advice of mature Christian friends. . . Often God will use people to advise other people. They'll be given a word or an impression in their spirit to advise us as to God's leading. 3. Be aware of doors opening and closing. . . Sometimes we can "see" quite clearly that God has opened a door for us in the way of an opportunity. Sometimes we can "see" quite clearly that God has closed the door. At other times we get the clear impression that God wants us to work at opening a closed door. St Paul was aware of God's leading in this way. God had plans for him that didn't include him going to certain areas. 4. Go with your gut feeling. . . Now this is important. If you want to invite disaster, follow these steps in the reverse order and wait for chaos to ensue!! What I'm getting at here, and what my pastor clearly indicated to me, is that even if we have been given the green light in the first three steps, we sometimes have an uneasy feeling in our spirit about committing. If we're prayerful in regard to making choices that could affect our future, sometimes that gut feeling is God prompting us to not go ahead. If our conscience doesn't condemn us we can move ahead with reasonable confidence that God's will is being done. In 1997 I was injured at work badly enough that I couldn't return to it. What to do then at just 43 years of age? I'd been playing guitar in bands, Christian and secular, for many years and was considered pretty good by all who heard and saw me play. Everyone . . and I mean everyone, Christian and non-Christians alike . . who knew me told me that this was an opportunity to become a professional musician and do music full time. Now we had two pastors at Church. One was the youngest ordained minister in the history of the Baptist Church in our country. He'd become a Reverend at just 22 years of age. He and I were the same age. The other minister had been called to ministry at age 39, after working regular jobs that included book publishing and teaching in schools. The Reverend, upon hearing that I was considering a career in music, came straight to my house to warn me that I'd be playing the devil's music and to drive taxis instead. With my injured arm being next to useless at that time and in serious pain, there was no way I could drive a cab for the required 12-hour shifts that cabbies have to do. But on the very night when I got home from work after injuring my shoulder I was able to give a guitar lesson. My arm and shoulder didn't impede me in doing that. I was in a lot of pain but I could play guitar without making anything hurt worse. So I went to the other minister and asked his advice. I'd been mentoring his son and the band he was fronting, as well as supplying them with equipment etc. So I spoke with Pastor Bill all morning about my future and what I should do. We talked about the four steps to discerning God's will that my previous pastor (who had moved interstate to pastor another church) had given me and Bill agreed that there was a lot of wisdom in that advice. He didn't tell me directly to follow everyone's advice and become a professional musician, but he did tell me to keep my options open and to be particularly aware of doors opening and closing when looking for direction. OK. I received no monetary payout for my injuries, apart from the measly statutory payout that was, after the government clawed back a substantial part of it to recoup what they'd paid my wife in social security while I was waiting for it, around $5000. I took that to the music store and bought a PA system and a music sequencer to make backing tracks. Now six months prior to my being injured, I had ordered a special guitar from that store. I had some trouble getting them to even order it because they had trouble with the wholesaler who didn't want to import it! Eventually I got my way. They ordered it and I had to wait until it arrived. Now I'd forgotten about it after all that had happened to me. In the back of my mind I knew it'd arrive eventually but it was on the back burner. I was sitting at home, working on the sequencer making backing tracks in preparation for my new career and this particular day I was feeling pretty depressed and doubtful as to whether I was doing the right thing. I asked God for some confirmation . . some sign that I was in His will. About five minutes after I'd prayed that, my phone rang and it was the music shop guy telling me that my guitar had arrived. I nearly rolled my car on the first bend driving over to pick it up! They hadn't opened the shipping box because they were waiting for me to get there. When we opened the box, there is was! The most stunning looking guitar I'd ever seen! THAT was my sign, my confirmation that I was on track. Over the years I've suffered many setbacks and encountered incredible opposition, simply because my level of ability surpasses that of many others in the industry who use technology to cover up a lack of ability. I've been put out of business FIVE times! But each time I've come back by the grace of God. I'm 62 now and as busy as I wanna be. It took me years to "let go and let God" as the saying goes. I still have to work very hard at obtaining bookings, but I'm quietly confident that God is working behind the scenes to help me. For example, I'll be thinking "I really need to redouble my efforts and look for more venues because I've exhausted all my leads" and the phone will invariably ring with a venue manager offering me a gig. Then I'll do the gig and more often than not, get return bookings. The odds of that happening are too small to calculate. It's gotta be God doing His thing.

Q2. (Joshua 5:14) What is the significance of the Commander of God’s Armies being with you? I wish I could answer this. What I see is God being with Joshua for the purpose of establishing His Kingdom on Earth. Yahweh was with Joshua for his whole life. This was a very special circumstance. I reckon 99.9% of us don't experience the Commander of God's Armies giving us victory in this life. For many of us, the Christian life is a continual battle that we never seem to win. In my own circumstances God "gives me this day my daily bread" . . and not a crumb more. Here's the thing: When we're out of step with God . . and let's face it, we all are . . we don't get our heart's desires because our hearts desire selfish things and our motives are wrong. Many of us, myself included, always feel like we're under God's rod . . We're being disciplined for our disobedience . . at least that's what it feels like. Are we alone in this experience? I've read many of the posts on the forum here over the years and there are stories of unbelievable problems that folks have to live with and they only have God's Grace to help them bear up under them. No less a person than Saint Paul had innumerable troubles in this life. But his reward was in the NEXT life, as he often declared. For a lot of us, our troubles only begin when we accept Christ! The preachers who teach that Christianity is the way to material riches and prosperity couldn't be more wrong. But we are rich in God's economy. We've been bought with a price we couldn't pay and could never afford to pay. I think we need to have more faith that God has won the battle and we can claim victories at the times we need to. Just how much help God gives is entirely up to Him. If he will fight your battles for you, what does your job consist of? My job is to let Him do it. Too often we try to be the commander and view God as our genie who will come to our aid and give us victory. God operates in His own time and according to His own plan. What I have to do is be available when needed to do my part.

Q1. (Joshua 5:13-16) What is Joshua’s challenge question to the Unknown Warrior with drawn sword? Joshua wants to know whose side this obviously great warrior is on. Like in the old westerns: Are you fer us or agin us? Who is He? I'm one of those who believes this Warrior is the pre-incarnate Jesus, the same "man" who visited with Abraham and wrestled with Jacob. This time He comes as a conquering Warrior. We see in the book of Revelation that Jesus is very much the Warrior in the Heavenly battle against the world powers Revelation 19:16. It is right here just before the conquering of Jericho that the battle to establish the Kingdom of God begins. We need to remember this:In Heaven, which exists outside our three dimensional universe, everything has already taken place. God is on His Throne and Jesus sits at His right hand. But in our timeline things have to unfold as God has already planned them to do in His divine timing. Whose side is He on? He is on His own side, God's side. Joshua quickly realised he was talking to The LORD here. He submits himself straight away upon the Warrior revealing His identity. Whose side are you on? I am on God's side. Sometimes in exasperation I plead with God to help me when times are really tough and I feel desperately alone and friendless. I do question if God is on my side, but I realise that He doesn't take sides. It's like in war time. There'd be Christians on both sides of the conflict, both praying to God for victory. Why does an encounter with Him require us to humble ourselves? God is the Potter and we are the clay. That's the way it is. In this world people love to exalt men and women and to think they're great, that they've really made something of themselves. Proverbs 16:9 says: In their hearts humans plan their course, but the LORD establishes their steps. So if we want to succeed at anything we need to acknowledge God and let him direct our paths. Then, if we are given success, we shouldn't become proud of it like we deserved it by our own efforts. Why is it so hard to submit ourselves to God? Human pride is a stumbling block over which we all fall. Pride is what stops us from submitting to God. We accomplish something, even a minor thing that'd be beneath the notice of most, and when we take pride in that, we aren't submitting to God. This is a really difficult concept here. There is a trap waiting to ensnare us and a bondage waiting to capture us if we focus all out attention on submitting to God. The enemy can get into our minds and we can become scared to be happy about an achievement in case we "fail to honor God". I've known people who have succumbed to that bondage and it's ruined their lives. They became unwilling to do their best in case they enjoyed the compliments they'd receive if they did. Personally, when I realise God has answered a prayer and given me success, I just thank Him for it and go over all the things I asked for and the help God gave me to make them happen and praise Him for that . . and move on. Whether I'm doing it right . . I don't know. I DO know that I don't ever wanna end up like a really gifted piano player I knew who, by his incredible ability really lifted the whole sound of our Baptist Youth Fellowship Rock Ensemble. He somehow started to think that he was doing things in his own strength, despite all of us praying that the concerts would go well and that people would be reached for Christ. He stopped embellishing the backing music and played it really straight and boring. Then he showed up with his hair, which wasn't that long compared to most, clipped down to a crew cut . . this was in 1972 when almost every guy had longer hair than they do today . . saying that his hair was coming between him and the LORD!! That poor guy was in bondage and his zeal to humble himself before God had been perverted by the evil one to the extent that he dropped out.

Q4. (Joshua 2:4-6) Does God honor Rahab for lying to the king's men? With all due respect, I really think we're barking up the wrong tree here. It's universally accepted that it's OK to lie in times of war to confuse the enemy. This spying mission was the first step in what definitely was a war. We must remember that God is in sovereign control here and no doubt directed the spies to Rahab's home. We also need to remember, since we're talking about Rahab's faith in this week's lesson, that it's God who gave Rahab the faith to believe in Him to start with. There's no doubt in my mind that once Rahab declared her faith in Yahweh that her actions from then on were based on His leading. My reading of this passage doesn't present any conflict at all about whether Rahab was honored by God for lying or whether He disapproved of it. She was simply doing the Will of God in assisting the spies that God, through Joshua, had sent in the first place. Is her lying justified in this case? Of course she had to lie! To not do so would have greatly jeopardised the spies' God-given mission. God uses people all the time to fulfill His will on Earth. Rahab deceived the city authorities in order to assist the spies in their mission for the LORD. Is there ever a time it might be permissible to lie? Where to I start to answer this? The comedy movie "Liar Liar" accurately and humorously shows us how awkward life can be if we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth all the time. "Does this outfit make me look fat?" the wife asks. What's the right answer here? Tell her: Yes . . and you're in for it. Tell her: No . . and you ease her mind. Does she indeed look fat? Women often have the idea that they're fat when they're actually not. And even if they are, their husbands love them anyway and don't want to offend them over something that can't be changed at the present moment anyway. So go ahead and say: No . . to keep the peace. The ninth commandment is actually a commandment not to bear false witness against our neighbor. As usual in any religious writings, people want to add to it. I'm definitely not saying that we can lie our guts out all the time as long as we don't bear false witness against anyone. . . . But consider this: Paul tells us in Romans 12:18 . . If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. If that means withholding the truth when it could hurt someone or even telling an untruth to keep the peace, then there's not really an issue here. Actually, people who blurt out the truth in conversations with no regard for the feelings of those present in the conversation are considered in today's society to have mental health issues! Aspergers Syndrome, for one. Suppose someone phones you and tells you that a person you know has given your name as a reference when applying for a job. You know some things about the person in question that may be detrimental to him/her if you tell the prospective employer about them. What do you do here? Tell the truth and kill off the person's chance of getting the job? Don't mention them and instead say that you've found the person to be reliable? Nobody's perfect, and the things that irritated you about the person may not be irritating to the new employer. Me? When I've been in that exact situation I always speak favorably about the job applicant. I always give them the benefit of the doubt. There has only ever been one man whom I'd never recommend to anyone. That's in the field in which I used to work. These days in the music industry, if anyone asks me to recommend a good agent I tell them . . absolutely truthfully . . that there aren't any good ones! The best I can do is mention some that aren't as bad as most and caution the buyer to beware. I believe the final barometer should be our conscience when it comes to the things we say to and about people. I reckon the best way to go is this: If you can't say something good about someone, don't say anything. Keep negative things under your hat. That way you're not bearing false witness against anyone. As for telling only the truth at all times . . let me know how that's working our for you. Our mission, which overrides everything in life, is to win people to God's Kingdom. A quiet answer turns away wrath. It also shows you to be a peaceful person. You're far more likely to gain people's confidence if you're exhibiting the peace that comes from God.

Q1. (Joshua 2:1) What were the spies sent to learn? In our modern vernacular, they were sent to "case the joint." They were to find out how prepared the people of Jericho were in the face of the impending invasion and to get the lay of the land. Why do you think they sought to lodge in a prostitute’s house? Such lodging would be more discrete than staying at an inn. Folks would be used to looking the other way when they saw men entering the home of a prostitute. Also a prostitute would have an accurate idea of the mood of the city. Sure enough, the text reveals that to be the case. Do you think God sent them there? I definitely think God sent them there. We should marvel at God's advance planning here. This woman, Rahab, would soon marry Salmon who would father Boaz who would marry another woman of faith from another people outside the Jewish line, Ruth who also converted to worshipping the One true God. Boaz would father Obed, who would father Jesse, the father of King David. While God was delivering Israel from the Egyptians and setting them up in their eventual earthly homeland, He was already making His plans for their, and the whole world's ultimate Salvation.

Q3. (Joshua 1:6-8) What kinds of things might Joshua be tempted to fear if he were to allow himself to dwell on his anxieties? Much is made of how Joshua, having been Moses' aide, would have been encouraged by Moses' faith and leadership example. But there's another side to all that. Joshua would have also seen Moses' frustrations, fears, his overwhelming responsibilities that at times looked like they would crush him, the rebellions (they are plural) of the Israelites, and many other things. As the time approached for Joshua to take over, all that would've been on his mind all the time. Whenever we attempt to push forward, in come the fears to make us doubt we'll succeed. At times when I suffer serious depression and anxiety, I wake up in the morning feeling fine . . then like an onrushing express train, all the worries and problems seem to race into my mind and that sets the tone for another miserable day. It's like a waterfall filling a coffee cup. Instantly full. So I start my day by praying to God to help me through all that. I need to focus on positive things and on God's promises. I'd imagine that Joshua had to do exactly that. Constantly reminding himself of God's promises to him. What does it mean to “be strong and very courageous”? That word from God Himself means to be strong in HIS strength and let our faith give us courage. Self-confidence is no confidence if it's not based on a reliance on God's provision. If we take the stance of: It's OK God, I got this . . we're setting ourselves up to fail. In my job as a professional musician, it's not enough to just be a good guitarist. For a gig to be successful people need to show up to attend the gig; they have to like my music; I have to get on well with everyone; any number of circumstances have to happen for the night to be seen as a success. The only thing I have any control over is being a good guitarist. I've done my practice. Even then, I depend on God to help me remember the words, chords, solos, starts and finishes, etc. Every other condition is dependent on God's provision. Therefore I cover myself in prayer on the way to every single show I play. Joshua's situation is like that but magnified a thousand-fold. Of course we see in the Bible that God gave Joshua His Spirit, without which he couldn't possibly succeed.God doesn't give you a job to do without equipping you to do it. What is the distinction between weakness and strength in Joshua’s situation? In Joshua's situation, weakness is the natural human condition without the help of Almighty God. Strength is found in reliance on God's empowering Spirit. "Not by might or by power, but by My Spirit" says the LORD. Zechariah 4:6. What is the relationship between fear and faith? In my case, the greater the fear, the greater the need for faith! No doubt Joshua felt the same way. Can you be courageous and still be fearful? Courage is NOT the absence of fear, but the ability to continue to press on despite fear.

Q3. (Matthew 5:39-42) What do Jesus' examples or tiny cameos in verses 39-42 have in common? Someone has said that if we were to carry out verses 39-42 literally, we would aid and abet evil. Do you agree? How should we take these examples: As case law? As hyperbole? As a series of aphorisms or adages? In another way? Someone has said that if we were to carry out verses 39-42 literally, we would aid and abet evil. Do you agree? I have to say yes. In my personal life's circumstances I have been the victim of bullying my entire life. First there was my brutal abusive father. Then in high school I was bullied by a whole gang of boys in the two grades lower than my year. I ended up making that stop by hospitalizing the ring leader with am extreme act of violence when I finally snapped after 18 months of copping it every single day. At work, when I left school, I was approached by an AMWAY salesman who was my first leading hand and when I wouldn't work for him selling that crap he made sure I wouldn't make it through my apprenticeship. At my next job a friend of my evil father took it upon himself to make my life as difficult as he possibly could. I quit when I couldn't take that any more. At my next job I got on great with everyone except my foreman who mistook me for a person from a neighbouring country that he had a real irrational hatred for and even after finding out I was actually Australian he kept up the persecution. I quit that job when he actually cut my pay just because he could! Then at my next job my supervisor was the worst example of a human being I'd ever met up to that time. Everyone hated him because there was simply nothing about him you could like! I'd become a Christian by that time and daily I prayed for him that God would soften him and help me to reach him for Christ but in the end his constant blasphemy and his treatment of me, a child of God, must have been too much for God and the man died, after I 'd suffered at his hands for 8 years. Mind you, if God hadn't killed him, I was only a few months away from doing it myself, such was his absolute hatred for me and he worked out that hatred toward me in so many ways that I was almost at breaking point. I would've beaten him to death. The day after his death I went to work and I felt like the "Nowhere Man" in that short lived TV series. With no one to focus their hatred on they all turned to me! By the Grace of God I endured that for another seven years before eventually being made redundant. I'd been forced to work at very heavy manual labor for the 15 years I spent at that company. I started there in 1982 fit and strong and by 1997 I'd suffered a broken vertebra in my lower back and torn my left bicep in my left shoulder, as well as having been adversely affected by the chemical spills because I had to clean them up with no safety gear back then. After 15 years there, I was made redundant and at my very next job the bicep snapped off. I have always been a good guitarist and was advised by everyone who knew me to pursue that as an alternative career. The music industry is run by the Mafia . . I didn't know that back then . . and I, like hundreds before me, ran foul of the godfather. I actually won a battle against him over a very trivial matter, but he well and truly won the war! In 2002 he banned me from every venue and in 2003 I spent five months with no work at all. He'd ordered every other booking agent to help him eradicate me and they took to the task with great enthusiasm. Those that weren't aligned with him took up the cause as well, simply because I was a better musician than almost everyone on their books. I pray to God for help to resist the temptation to hunt them down and kill them! Their persecution of me eventually cost me my marriage and I've been divorced since 2007. My wife couldn't take the incredible uncertainty of my employment and started looking for a more stable replacement for this itinerant Bluesman. Now . . why do I believe that praying for these people and asking God to bless them is aiding and abetting evil? By doing that I am enabling them to not only continue to hurt me and my career, but to continue to do the same to other people as well. King David, in many Psalms, prayed to God to avenge him against his enemies and to bring about their utter destruction. Now that's Old Testament, pre-Christ's sacrifice thinking, but it's in the Bible . . and David was a man after God's own heart. So, how should I pray for people who are still actively and aggressively working against me with extreme prejudice? I limit my prayers for them to just asking God to bless them with good health and asking God to, in whatever way, facilitate their coming to know Christ as their Saviour. I can't and won't ask God to bless their businesses because by doing that I'm, by default, asking God to ruin mine. This cartel of music industry overseers, for want of a better word, actually take significant time and resources each week to look for me to keep up the pressure to force me out. It'd be like praying to God to strengthen the arm of a man who was beating you with a stick so he could beat you harder. I'm having a real problem with this study. Being divorced, even though it was due to marital unfaithfulness, am I under God's curse? Am I wasting my time in even trying to serve God because I'm out of his Will due to my life's circumstances? Will I be one of those who gets into Heaven by the skin of my teeth with my very clothes singed by the flames? After reading this study I believe the answers to all these questions is Yes! Like This Quote MultiQuote

Q3. (Matthew 5:5) How does this sort of gentleness contrast with the world's ideal? One day, in a parent-teacher meeting, my daughter's teacher . . I think she was in the fourth grade . . told me that she wasn't assertive enough. She was letting others enter the room ahead of her and letting people in front of her in queues. etc. In other words she was behaving in a meek and humble way towards others. I explained that I'd taught her manners from a very young age and that I was proud of her for being that way, thinking of others ahead of herself. That was how I was raised as well. Her teacher told me that I hadn't done her any favours, because to get ahead in the world she'd have to adopt a dog-eat-dog attitude. How sad? How is humility important to Christlikeness? "Take my yoke and learn from Me because I am humble and gentle in spirit" . . That's how important humility is. If and when God raises us up to a position of importance, the worst thing we can do is feel self-important. And the hardest thing to do is to remain humble and keep on giving the credit to God for his grace in allowing us to prosper. Like This Quote MultiQuote

Q2. (Matthew 5:3-4) Why is it necessary to be aware of your spiritual poverty before you can become a Christian? A person needs to be aware of their "lostness", their inability to save themselves from the fate all sinners must face. What kind of mourning is necessary for a person to become a Christian? People need to repent. The conviction of the Holy Spirit often brings about extreme sadness when someone is fully confronted by how they've lived their lives. Also, we need to feel sorrow over the way we ignored God prior to our acceptance of Christ's salvation. What kind of mourning is a common experience of Christians? (See Isaiah 61:2-3; Ezekiel 9:4.) We feel sorrow over our friends and relatives who refuse to come to Christ as we have. We also mourn over the sin in the world and all the violence and injustice that sin causes.

Q1. (Matthew 5:3-11) Each Beatitude consists of two parts. What are these parts? The first part of each beatitude is describing who is being blessed. The second part is giving us the reason why they are blessed. Why do you think Jesus made each Beatitude a paradox? Paradoxes make people think. Jesus' time on earth was at a very crucial point in Israel's and the world's history. In Israel the Scribes and the Pharisees had the Jewish faith "all sorted out" and were living lives of seeming piety, and proud as punch of being so pious. They were legalistic in the extreme and actually persecuted their own people for what they perceived as a lack of piety, By proclaiming that the very people the Pharisees were condemning for being inferior to themselves were, in fact, the objects of God's blessing, Jesus was teaching a very radical and new way of viewing the Jewish religion. What is the relationship of the Beatitudes to the Fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23)? The fruit of the Spirit . . love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control . . are the very visible attributes of people whom God had blessed. Jesus' list of people who are favored by God would be those whose lives are governed by the fruit of the Spirit. Like This Quote MultiQuote

Q2. In what ways does taking Jesus’ name on ourselves, or identifying ourselves with him, open us to shame and persecution? In this day and age Christians are regarded as simplistic idiots. In many educated circles evolution is assumed to be a proven fact . . Yeah I know it'll never be proved, but its proponents make it their lives' work to try and prove it . . and anyone who believes that God made the heavens and the earth, whether in seven actual days of seven billion years, is regarded as a naive fool who can't be bothered to investigate the "truth". We're also despised for our stand on abortion, same-sex marriage, and many other things condemned in the Bible, but popular with the masses. Have you seen examples of this in your own experience? My best friend is an atheist who believes with all his heart in evolution. He has no real moral compass and sees nothing wrong with *********** and many other things that Christians avoid like the plague. He's tolerant enough of my beliefs but it does make for interesting discussions. In the general world I don't have that high a profile that my being a Christian really attracts much persecution. On Facebook I'm often derided for my beliefs but that's water off a duck's back to me. That's not the real world, even though it's the whole world to many. What actions might show that a Christian is ashamed of Jesus? Sometimes people ask you outright it you're a Christian. If you answer: "Sort of . ." that means you aren't willing to fully commit. In fairness, it's sometime said because you aren't where God wants you to be and you don't want to bring shame to the name of Christ because you're not acting in a Christ-like way. What actions might show that a Christian is unashamed of Jesus? Any time we take a stand against things that are not according to God's will and purpose we proclaim our allegiance to Christ.