September 15, 2024
Greetings and blessings to all of you. We are in an election time. It is very important that the people of God understand the heart and love of God. If Nicodemus had truly understood God’s Word, he would have known who Jesus was. Even though he was a great teacher he was harboring the “sin of unbelief.” Are you harboring unbelief in the values that God honors? As a people of God do you know His values or do you honor and respect the culture’s values? In Mark 9:24 a man had a struggle with faith and doubt when his son was possessed by a demon. He was not sure God could help him. Sometimes we struggle in the same way. We know what God wants for us as Christians but at the same time we lean to our own understanding; we waver in acknowledging the power of God. We focus more on what we want and what we believe based on what we heard on the secular media -not from the Word of God. Nicodemus and Paul did the same thing ..both of them excelled in what was taught to them. However, they had a difficult time believing Christ until they were both saved and their eyes were opened to the Truth. The verse that we should lean on in this time of divisiveness is Psalm 55 “for my thoughts are not your thoughts and your ways are not my ways…for the heavens is higher than earth so my ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” There were always great thinkers (philosophers) who influenced our way of thinking and that has not changed. It appeared they were not followers of Christ. *Sigmund Freud believed because of all the suffering in the world “there is No God.” *Karl Marx said, “religion is the opium of the people.” He desired a Communist society which condemns free market and private property. *Charles Darwin did not believe that the Bible is the Divine Revelation of God and that Jesus was a just mere man. *Friedrich Nietzsche said, “God is Dead and that morality is determined by an individual’s perspective.” Who are the great thinkers we are following? In Psalm 2:4 it says, “ He who sits in the heavens shall laugh; The Lord shall hold them in derision.” Sometimes professing Christians behave as if there is no God adhering to values that God disapproves of. They follow not God but the “new great thinkers /philosophers of this world.” Our government (read Romans 13) was instituted to follow God’s values and principles ……not our own.
With the Love of Christ
First Lady Vivian C. Currie
Pastor ALC