Matthew Chapter 24 is a definite go-to for study on what Jesus said about the end-times. I have always been really interested in this because that is basically how I became a Christian. I found a copy of Hal Lindsey’s “The Late, Great Planet Earth” lying around. (My mom probably bought that book at the grocery store along with a book on Vitamin E and one about aliens coming to Earth in ancient times—my mom was curious about anything new). I picked that book up and I was never the same. The whole idea of the Bible being true or relevant to my life was completely novel, so when I read that book, I also began to look at the Bible in a new way, as something that actually had something to say to me today.

At that point in my life—my sophomore year in high school—I had been questioning a lot of what was going on in the world. So many public servants were only serving themselves, not the public. Too many peace protesters were using violence to make their anti-war statements. To me, they were all terrible hypocrites.

I never liked hypocrisy. I saw it everywhere. So, once I woke up to see the hypocrisy in myself, I wanted Christ to change me and make me new in whatever areas did not line up with His Kingdom principles.

Of course, our natural inclination is to want to excuse our own behavior and blame others, but doing so will not make us more like Jesus. What will make us more like Jesus is that we lay ourselves and all we are, were, or ever will be down before Him at the foot of His cross. Only then will we rise up to the new life He has for us. Otherwise, we are just deceiving ourselves that we are following after Him.

It is easy to be deceived by self and sin. Our natural state is to see the world through the eyes of self-justification, pride, and self-satisfaction, but such motivations do not let us see what is really wrong with our own souls, our own thoughts, own actions, and own motivations.

God wants to and is able to change us to make us more like Christ. When we are eager to admit our weaknesses, errors, bad judgement, and sin, we become willing to let such things go and we then humbly agree with God about what is going on in our hearts. When God’s people resist the Holy Spirit’s call to repentance, they are not going to actually become more like Christ. Instead, such people will be hardened in their thinking and everything will continually reinforce the false perceptions that justify self, rather than acknowledge a need for change. The world will not see Christ’s reflection in a person or church like that. Instead, the world is like the little boy who sees the naked Emperor  called “specially clothed” by all the people who could and should know better.

If Christian people appear to the world around them to be completely self-deceived about the condition of their own souls, there will hardly be any impact for good upon the “worldly” people with whom we come into contact. In order to make an impact, Christians need to be the most humble, the most repentant, the most likely to forgive, the most likely to love, the most merciful, the most generous—the most like Jesus—in all the world of people, in order to have anyone recognize that Jesus is actually alive in their midst. The church and Christians need desperately to put aside those things that prevent a living of life that reflects the Christ that we are supposed to follow.

Jesus’ words to His disciples in Matthew 24 warn us about what to expect when the end times come. He said that “even the elect might be deceived” which I always have taken to mean that Christians might even be deceived about false prophets and anti-messiahs, which is what the immediate verses are pointing to. Lately, however, I have realized that in order to be deceived by a false prophet or teacher, the Christian must first be deceived about what to believe and who we are to be. Knowing the Bible and knowing oneself—making sure the inner “self” is itself in submission to Christ and His words, with nothing held back in which to make excuses for self or others—is the only way to keep oneself from being deceived.

—Susan LaVelle

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Recommended reading on this topic:

From Amazon’s description of the book:

“As Christians, we know that we are new creations in Jesus. So we try to act differently, hoping this will make us more like Him. But changing our outward behavior doesn’t change our hearts. Only by God’s grace can we be transformed internally. Renovation of the Heart lays a biblical foundation for understanding what best-selling author Dallas Willard calls the “transformation of the spirit”―a divine process that “brings every element in our being, working from inside out, into harmony with the will of God.”

This fresh approach to spiritual growth explains the biblical reasons why Christians need to undergo change in six aspects of life: thought, feeling, will, body, social context, and soul. Willard also outlines a general pattern of transformation in each area, not as a sterile formula but as a practical process that you can follow without the guilt or perfectionism so many Christians wrestle with.

Don’t settle for complacency. Accept the challenge Renovation of the Heart offers to become an intentional apprentice of Jesus Christ, changing daily as you walk with Him.”

There are so many needs around me that  I am overwhelmed by it all. However, I need to pray more at those moments, not less. 

It is easy to give into feelings of inadequacy when you feel like you don’t know how to help or solve what seem like impossible problems. The problems are probably impossible; you are probably right about that. However, since we have a God of the “impossible,” giving up and focusing on self is not the answer. We must pray and focus even more on getting to really know the God who has promised through Jesus’ words to heal and answer prayer.

In Matthew 19:26, it says, “But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.’”  The word in the verse for “looked at them” means that Jesus “looked his disciples intently in the eye” to say this to them.

In saying this, Jesus wasn’t distracted or saying it in passing or just trying to placate His disciples. These words are a promise.

So much of the needs that come to our attention fit into the category, “Something that to man is impossible.” For example, when we or someone we know are sick, we might go to the doctor, try a supplement, complain to our friends, worry a lot, or maybe even just ignore it. This same approach is followed for lots of our problems, whether the problems are emotional, financial, relational, national, or something else. Sometimes we even pray about the problems that we see, but too often, those prayers start and end as monologues at God about how we wish “it” were different.  

If we are honest, we might recognize that we don’t expect God to have something to say to us about the situation or about our lives or what we should do. Maybe we just don’t bother to listen. If—or when—we get desperate enough, we pray really hard and maybe even try striking a bargain with God, such as, “God, if you answer this prayer, I will never smoke another cigarette” or “I promise to give money” or to become “better” or we pull out some other “bargaining chip.”

God doesn’t take or need our bargaining chips. All of that bargaining fails to hear what God may in fact be saying to us.

What I have just said is directed to those people not yet open to hearing what God has to say concerning their life. God certainly has something to say and what He has to say is always Good News. God Himself wants to speak and be a part of our lives. What really could be better news than that? 

What He says will be individualized to each person, just like when Jesus conversed with people in Bible times. He spoke to individuals about their individual needs. He saw what was really on each person’s heart–their hidden, inner, and personal needs. In the New Testament, Jesus’ interactions with those He healed show how He spoke directly and individually to the heart. Each conversation with people during His earthly ministry, was an opportunity to speak Good News into impossible situations.

For example, in Mark 2:3-11, some friends brought a paralyzed man to Jesus for healing. The friends were impeded by the crowds. The only way to get their paralyzed friend to Jesus was to drop him through the roof of where Jesus was preaching. They took the roof apart and let the man down through the hole. Upon seeing him, Jesus’ first words to the paralyzed man were, “Son, your sins are forgiven.”

Jesus saw what was important to the man–his internal needs–then, healed the disease and restored the man’s mobility. Jesus was listening to the most important cry of that man’s heart, which was not evident to the friends or to the crowd, but was known to the man and to Jesus. However, Jesus did not ignore the man’s physical need; he healed the body as proof that He could forgive the sin. Jesus showed Himself as Lord of the physical world and through that, showed Himself to be Lord of the internal state of the man and the Spiritual world, too.

When we pray in Jesus’ Name to God, the Heavenly Father, our prayers are heard. Through prayer, we also have a chance to listen to the Good News that Jesus wants to speak into our lives today.

—Susan LaVelle

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Recommended reading:

“Hearing God: Developing a Conversational Relationship with God” Dallas Willard

“‘God spoke to me.’ ‘The Spirit spoke to my heart.’ ‘God revealed the idea to me.’

“Being close to God means communicating with him–telling him what is on our hearts in prayer and hearing and understanding what he is saying to us. It is this second half of our conversation with God that is so important but that can also be so difficult. How do we hear his voice? How can we be sure that what we think we hear is not our own subconscious? What role does the Bible play? What if what God says to us is not clear? The key, says best-selling author Dallas Willard, is to focus not so much on individual actions and decisions as on building our personal relationship with our Creator. In this updated and expanded edition of Willard’s beloved book, originally published as In Search of Guidance, you’ll gain rich spiritual insight into how we can hear God’s voice clearly and develop an intimate partnership with him in the work of his kingdom. Including new material from Dallas Willard’s teaching at the Renovaré Institute and reformatted to be even easier to read, this classic continues to endure as one of today’s best resources for learning to listen closely to God.”

SEPTEMBER 16, 2016

Matthew 6:22-23 “The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!”

Psalm 119:105 “Your word is a lamp for my feet, a light on my path.”

The eye is the gateway for your brain to receive images of your physical surroundings and convert those images in your brain to meaningful information. Our eyes imprint the things we see around us onto the memory centers of our brains. We access those images mentally, long after we have changed locations or turned out the lights. What we see, we keep in the inner eye of remembrance.

Our visual remembrances of images and experiences can help us or hurt us. For example, we can be instructed through visual clues about our surroundings that enable us to make decisions, find locations, structure our days, and recognize people and places. We use our eyes to interpret the body movements and facial expressions that go beyond the words spoken in a conversation. For people suffering vision impairment, the physical world afforded to us normally through our eyes must be accessed in some other manner in order for people to function in the day-to-day affairs of the sighted. Our eyes are marvelously and immeasurably complex; through them, we gain the knowledge we need to proceed forward through every day on this planet and from our eyes we gain knowledge of the people around us.

Most of us know the warnings in the Old Testament, such as Ps 101:3, “I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes.” or Job 31:1, “I made a covenant with my eyes; why then should I think on a maid?” These instruct us about how dangerous it is to absorb bad images into the eye of our memories, because such things might distract us or lead us to act badly, such as encouraging us to covet or even steal something that isn’t our own. Sometimes, we fill our brains with images that lead us to fear, greed, lust, or hate. In Ps 119, the question is posed, “How are people to keep their ways pure?” The answer is, we are to fix our eyes on God and learn His ways through His word.

Psalm 119:9-16 (ESV)

How can a young man keep his way pure?
By guarding it according to your word.

With my whole heart I seek you;
let me not wander from your commandments!

I have stored up your word in my heart,
that I might not sin against you.

Blessed are you, O Lord;
teach me your statutes!

With my lips I declare
all the rules of your mouth.

In the way of your testimonies I delight
as much as in all riches.

I will meditate on your precepts
and fix my eyes on your ways.

I will delight in your statutes;
I will not forget your word.

The only way for us as Christ-followers to keep ourselves on the right path is to know what God has said to us in His word. To fill our eyes with the light of His word is the only way to let the light of God’s truth penetrate into all the parts of our minds and lives with His truth and life. Only by letting God’s word of truth penetrate all parts of our lives, will we be able to avoid the dangers of self-deception and hypocrisy. We want Jesus to be shown through our lives as truly, clearly, and authentically as possible. We don’t want anything to confuse people about who Jesus is or cause them to miss His great love, all because we are not showing them the genuine life of Christ.

Here are a few verses to help us meditate on how “eye” is used in the New Testament, starting with the book of Matthew. The word is used for the physical eye, but more importantly, the figurative eye, or in other words, the gateway to our souls and minds. If the eye of our souls’ vision is blocked or faulty—for example, if it is blocked by a log, closed by blindness or slumber, or leading us astray in some way—we will not be filled with light, and worse yet, we might not know the objective facts about ourselves. We will be blind to what is going on in our souls.

• Matthew 5:29 (also see 18:9) “If your right eye makes you stumble…”
• Matthew 5:38 “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye…”
• Matthew 7:3 “If you see the log that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice…”
• Matthew 9:29 Jesus heals two blind men: “And their eyes were opened…”
• Matthew 13:15 Jesus quotes from Isaiah: “…and their eyes they have closed…lest they see”
• Matthew 13:16 “Blessed are your eyes because they see….Many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it…”
• Matthew 17:8 “And when they lifted up their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only.”
• Matthew 20:32-34 “Jesus called them [two blind men] and said, “What do you want me to do for you?” They said to him, “Lord, let our eyes be opened.”
• Matthew 21: 42 Jesus quotes from the old testament scriptures regarding the chief cornerstone rejected by those who wanted to build the house, but on whom the cornerstone would fall and crush, “…this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes’?”
• Matthew 26:43 About the disciples falling asleep in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus had asked them to stay awake and pray: “And again he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy.”

These verses show the importance of having the eyes of our hearts and minds clear and open to seeing God through His word. 

Lay before the Lord the state of your vision so that He can search you with His light. 

May the eyes of your heart be open and healthy and “your whole body full of light.”

—Susan LaVelle

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Recommended Reading to help you have more productive Bible study:

How to Read the Bible for All It’s Worth, Dr. Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart

From Amazon’s description of this book:

“Understanding the Bible isn’t for the few, the gifted, the scholarly. The Bible is accessible. It’s meant to be read and comprehended by everyone from armchair readers to seminary students. A few essential insights into the Bible can clear up a lot of misconceptions and help you grasp the meaning of Scripture and its application to your twenty-first-century life.

More than three quarters of a million people have turned to How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth to inform their reading of the Bible. This fourth edition features revisions that keep pace with current scholarship, resources, and culture. Changes include:

• Updated language for better readability
• Scripture references now appear only in brackets at the end of a sentence or paragraph, helping you read the Bible as you would read any book—without the numbers
• A new authors’ preface
• Redesigned and updated diagrams
• Updated list of recommended commentaries and resources

Covering everything from translational concerns to different genres of biblical writing, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth is used all around the world. In clear, simple language, it helps you accurately understand the different parts of the Bible—their meaning for ancient audiences and their implications for you today—so you can uncover the inexhaustible worth that is in God’s Word.”

SEPTEMBER 11, 2016 TAGGED PRAYER, PRAYER REVOLUTION IN US, SPIRITUAL LIFE, WHAT WE NEED

On the “About” page of this website, you will find the text of Psalm 51, which is captioned in the Bible text as being “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” This psalm is basically the lyrics to a song about the day when David was caught up in the consequences of his sin of adultery with the wife of another man. David, as King, not only betrayed the man by sleeping with his wife, but she became pregnant and because of this, David further sinned by sending that man, one of his loyal soldiers, off to the front lines, in the hopes that he would die in battle.

These are the lyrics to a great psalm about personal repentance, which is a model for us today, since we also need to face the consequences of our own rebellious state. We have not walked as we should. We have strayed from God as families, as churches, as a nation. But the most fundamental straying that we have done has been as individuals. On the most basic level, each person has failed to take up the calling of love to God that Jesus said was the greatest commandment. Because we have failed in that greatest commandment, we have also failed in the one that Jesus has called the second greatest, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves.

And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40 ESV)

When we as Christians—Christ followers—go off in all directions, seeming to care about the Kingdom of God, but in reality are primarily concerned with the externals of our Christian practice, our church programs, our religio-political strategies, and our extra-Biblical narratives, then, even if what we think we are doing is Christian and advancing God’s plans, we are actually getting in the way of His accomplishing His purposes. True, sometimes He actually calls us to involvement in programs, politics, and practices, but such things are only building God’s Kingdom and doing His work if we are first doing these things as an outflow of our love for Him and the insight that we have received from a personal call from His Spirit.

When David sent this song off to the choirmaster, we don’t know who else was going to hear that song in David’s time period. Perhaps no one in the temple heard it because it was a private contemplation for the king alone, or perhaps everyone heard it. However, in the days since, we all have heard this cry of the psalmist for cleansing and restoration; because of David’s openness in penning it, we, too, can use these words in a renewed focus on the Lord. The Lord can use these words to thereby start a revolution in our souls, a revolution that, one can hope, will spread beyond each individual, to reach the world that needs so much help.

Such is the most important prayer revolution of our day: a personal prayer revolution.

—Susan LaVelle