Fifth Sunday in Lent, Commonly called Passion Sunday

Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and Action

Church of the Faithful Centurion

Descanso, California

Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above. 

Consider these words from the Collect:

… thy people; … by thy great goodness … may be governed and preserved evermore, both in body and soul …

In the Collect, we acknowledge without God’s great goodness and divine intervention, we cannot be preserved in either body or soul.  This is a constant truth through ought the Bible and the New Testament in particular.  Without God’s great goodness we simply cannot be preserved. What does asking for God’s great goodness mean for us? It means when we ask we might be governed and thus preserved by His great goodness, we are in effect asking for His Guidance for us, so we can be preserved in both body and soul. We acknowledge God is the ultimate good and is the source of all truth, and we need His Help if we are to succeed. This concept is constant throughout all the collects. It is constant because it is the truth. We can only follow the narrow uphill path towards heaven with His Goodness and His Guidance.  As always, if we are left to our own devices and desires, we are lost.  Guided means we need to ask, then listen to what He Tells us, then actually follow those instructions.  

For us who are not perfect, following instructions can be hard at times but it must be done nevertheless. For if we do not follow His Instructions, we will never make it. Fortunately for us We have His guidance through the Holy Spirit available to help us make progress on the narrow uphill trail towards heaven. 

                                                                     

If we are looking to Him for guidance, we then need look to Him for safety.  Safety meaning only the safety of our soul, our eternal life. It does not mean safety from dangers to the body here on Earth. The body is just a temporary shell for our soul to be carried in while we do our best to do what God asks of us. We aren’t asking God for safety from the dangers to the body; but more importantly, we are asking safety for our soul. When our bodies fail and die here on earth, it is not a big deal compared to what happens to our souls after Death. What we need above all is protection from what we deserve by our own nature; eternal damnation.  So, the safety of us on this plane of existence is not nearly as important as in eternity. 

Our only means of being accounted as perfect when we come before God is to rely on the sacrifice and intermediary priesthood of His Son, our Savior Jesus Christ to account us as perfect before God on that final day. Christ has replaced the intermediary priesthood of the Jews with himself our one and only High Intermediary Priest.  Your AOC ministers, while officially titled as priests, are not intermediary priests! The day of the intermediary priests have come and gone for us with the Old Testament in the past. We only need Christ, there are no middle men between us and Jesus.  He is our Savior, our Leader, our Teacher, our Master, our Example! 

Christ came to succeed the Old Covenant marked by sacrifices of innocent animals; killing off animals in an effort to atone for our sins really did not do the job. It has always required Jesus’s sacrifice. The Old Covenant simply existed because it had to be on Earth first to prepare the people for the coming of the New. He established the New Covenant marked by His death on the Cross for our sins; this has done the job intended. God knew He had to set in place the Old before He could set in place Jesus and the New Covenant. People simply would not be prepared for Jesus’s message otherwise.

Going back to the concept of action, not just diction, Jesus commanded us to follow this concept by spreading the Gospel, the story of Jesus’ death and sacrifice for us for all time, and for all mankind, to all nations. In this, He said very clearly if we are His followers, we will do as He asks, in acting for Him. Action, not just diction, is what He is looking for. So, let us act for Him! 

In the Gospel, Jesus explained to the Pharisees before Abraham had even been conceived, He was. In fact, Jesus was the one who created this Earth, so He has been around since before the beginning of the planet. The Pharisees could or would not grasp in their heads Jesus was who He claimed to be, the Son of God. They chose to try to destroy His ministry rather than follow Him. Time and time again we see them confronted with the truth Jesus offers and they always choose to reject it rather than embrace the truth.

This is a very common pattern with the enemies of God. Their hearts have been blinded by their love of their selves, pride and greed. They cannot see the simple truths we see as followers of God. They look down upon us and think we are the ignorant ones, when reality is the other way around. 

They cannot, or will not, see that the priceless gift Jesus came to offer us. Jesus came to save our souls and give us eternal life, eternal life starting right then.  Not just for the Jews and Israel, but the whole wide world, Jew, Gentile, Greek and all others.  Jesus brought salvation and life to the entire world.  That was not what the Pharisees were looking so hard for with their magnifying glasses as they examined Torah and The Law.  They were looking for what would be only a temporary power, power on this physical plane. This pales in comparison to safety and happiness forever, for all eternity.  Pharisees were not big picture people, and as Calvin told Hobbes, We big picture people rarely become historians or Pharisees, I might add.   The Pharisees were very obviously not big picture people; they misinterpreted the prophecies of the Messiah. Regardless, even though some people chose to misunderstand the prophecies, He came and He made that one sacrifice, at one time, for all mankind, for all time. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life[1].

Who is Jesus?  Our Savior?  Indeed.  But, more He has been since before the beginning of the world, for He is One with I Am.

Through His Actions, we are saved.

Do ye likewise:

ACT

Heaven is at the end of an uphill trail.  The easy downhill trail does not lead to the summit.

The time is now, not tomorrow.  The time has come, indeed.  How will you ACT?

It is by our actions we are known.

Be of God - Live of God - Act of God

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[1] If the text of this sentence seems familiar, it is John 3.16, probably the most widely quoted text of the Bible.

Fourth Sunday in Lent

Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and Action

Church of the Faithful Centurion

Descanso, California

Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above. 

Consider these words from the Collect:

… we, who for our evil deeds do worthily deserve to be punished, by the comfort of thy grace may mercifully be relieved …

In the Collect, as is often to the case we acknowledge to God we have fallen way short of our goals He set for us. We are also acknowledging we deserve to be punished for our failures; by His Grace we are relieved of that punishment. Jesus accomplished that relieving by laying down His Life that we might be free of eternal damnation. 

                                                                                        

In order for us to enter heaven, we have to be accounted as perfect.  Most of us know we are so far away from perfect, it would not seem to be possible. 

How then can we get into heaven, if not by our own means?

The answer is simple. God has provided the Way, the one true Way, by sending His Son Jesus Christ to die for our sins that we might have eternal life, and He also sent the Holy Ghost to help guide us. 

At that final judgment day, if we stay the course and follow God’s guidance, we can be accounted as perfect through the Grace of God’s Son, our Saviour, Jesus Christ, Paul is right on point when he talks about the two sons of Abraham, one of the bond, one of the free.   Being adopted into the freewoman’s family requires us to follow Him and His guidance. This gift of eternal life is not free. It was paid for by Jesus’ death on the Cross and it requires us to actively following and working for Him here on earth.

The son of the bondwoman represents our state before Christ and those who refuse to follow Him.  They are stuck in bondage to their own sins and to Satan and will never truly be free. They are in essence slaves of their own will. We have free will, let us exercise it in the way God intended, to follow the path of righteousness towards Him.

The two are representative of the two covenants with God, the bond under The Law and the free under The New Covenant.  

The people of old are The People of The Law.  Six Hundred Thirteen Laws each of which they were to follow.  They really did not  attempt to follow them, rather not to break them., A very complex and even more difficult life to live, to comply and uphold those laws and failing. We still fail miserably at times, but we only have two laws, which we will hear about in a second. They are still hard to uphold, but if we manage to, easier to remember.  The big thing to remember about the 613 laws is that they could not accomplish what Christ accomplished in His Sacrifice and establishing the New Covenant. The Holy Ghost helps us along the journey to this goal, to bring us to that eternal life.

The New Covenant is so much less complex than the Old Covenant.  It is much easier to remember the ways of the New Covenant than the Old Covenant. However, the Old Covenant had to come first to get people’s hearts ready to follow the New Covenant.  For the New Covenant could not be introduced, or in other words, Jesus could not come to Earth until the people were ready for His Teachings. The Old Covenant was a stepping stone to the New Covenant.

Remember this from Holy Communion:

Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith:

T

HOU shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.

Under the New Covenant, we have only two laws with which we must comply.  But, there is a catch.  We are not to just avoid breaking those two laws, we must actually live them in our hearts, souls, minds AND bodies.  We must actualize them. It is the common theme of Action not just Diction, that appears in sermons past here. The only way in which we can follow these two laws is we have to put them into practice in our day to day lives, which requires Action and not just Diction. 

That is way harder.  We are imperfect creatures with free will; a combination doomed to failure.

True, but we have the ultimate Get out of Jail Free card – Jesus Christ the righteous and He is the propitiation for our sins!  Remember that?  He accounts us as perfect at our final accounting!

There are two choices, two covenants, we can choose either to be enslaved to sin and Satan; or to be free under God and Jesus. These are the two sides of which Paul speaks. We can be either enslaved to sin or we can be truly free and under God.  The two choices boil down to either eternal slavery or eternal freedom. I know which side I want to be on, do you? From  arational viewpoint, there is only one side to pick, and that is the side of freedom, of the New Testament offered to us by Christ himself. As people of The New Covenant, the original and real New Deal, we have only to live those two laws or rules; To love the Lord with all our hearts and to love our neighbor.  Those are much harder to comply with, however, if we seek God’s guidance out and follow it, then all will be well with our souls. 

The Gospel gives us the message that when we need help, how about instead of worrying all the time, we substitute it with action?  Trust God will give us what we need.  And, then act based on what we can and should do, not what we want to do.  Actions gets results.   These results may or not be obvious right away, but they will be soon enough. A hard principle to follow; but in the end, it is the easiest way and worth the struggle to trust God instead of worrying and or doing what we want to do. 

Action will always benefit our spiritual state compared to inaction. Through the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we are compelled to act upon our faith. Perhaps not what we want right at the time, but certainly what we need then and in the eternal future.  In the middle of nowhere, two thousand years from the nearest McDonalds, the disciples looked to Jesus to fill the needs of their congregation.  Jesus took what they had and gave them what they needed; “for he himself knew what he would do.”  He acted to help them.  Do ye likewise:

ACT

Heaven is at the end of an uphill trail.  The easy downhill trail does not lead to the summit.

The time is now, not tomorrow.  The time has come, indeed.  How will you ACT?

It is by our actions we are known.

Be of God - Live of God - Act of God

Third Sunday in Lent

Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and Action

Church of the Faithful Centurion

Descanso, California

Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above. 

Consider these words from the Collect:

… look upon the hearty desires of thy humble servants, and stretch forth the right hand of thy Majesty, to be our defence against all our enemies …

In the Collect, we ask God look in to our hearts, and see our desire to be His children and defend us against evil.  That also means we are looking for His Help which comes in the form of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost will assist us in the process of changing of our hearts to actually have “hearty desires” to do His Will and to be “humble servants”, not our usual and customary self-centered selves.  Quite a combination of thoughts in a small bit of verbiage!  It is amazing how much we can put in a short sentence if we use our words to their best advantage! If we will be follow Him, He will defend us in all assaults of our enemies. ^[1]  If we will not accept His Help, He will not force it on us.  Back to that old, “Thy will be done.”  The question arises once again, from whose mouth does it proceed, ours or God’s? 

We need to desire God’s goodness to enter into our hearts, so that we will be walking on the path towards God and not away from God. That means that we need to become more like God as best we can and refrain from malicious, self-serving acts incongruent with the message of Jesus and need to instead embrace more Christ like behavior, and more loving our neighbors as ourselves. If that is indeed the backbone of the Law as Christ explained, then we should be focusing our energies on serving our neighbors and behaving in a Godly manner. While this seems like an impossible task, we do have heavenly help, that is the Holy Spirit. 

Today’s Epistle and Gospel share the same theme. This theme is centered around action. In order to be a Christian, you have to act as a Christian and not just say we are.  Saying we are Christians and actually being Christians are two different states of being. It is quite easy to say we are Christians, it is quite another to act like we are.

In his Epistle, Paul tells us in order to live out our faith, we need to make our actions match our stated desires, very much in line with the thought above.   Actions! Not just Dictions, but Actions! There can be a distinct difference between the two.  If you actually believe, you will act.  If you just say you believe, you will not.  There is a distinct difference between the two states, action and inaction. Faith requires action, unbelief is equal to the state of inaction.

There are too many people who claim to be Christian, yet do not actually act on the principles of Christ and follow His Instructions. They do not truly understand what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is called to a life of action and not just diction. To be Christian, we have to actually follow those said principles. The key word here is following or acting. Action is the central theme of the Christian faith, which was first shown with Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection. He came to act for us, not just to talk or meditate; His great plan involved action, though it was painful, it was His action that released us from the wages of sin. We have to follow His Example that He set for us and live our lives in a manner that reflects we believe the Gospel. 

Think about the Gospel.

It is very important to be unified in our worship and maintain mutual support; a team always beats individuals.  That is not to take away from individuality, but rather to note we need to remember whose side we are on and work together with our teammates. We have to remember that we need to utilize specific talents given to us by Our Lord to help further His Cause here on earth. In order to truly serve Him, we must be willing to put aside our old selves and truly accept the regeneration He offers us and become the New Man Paul talks about. 

There are two phrases particularly worth remembering, “a house divided against a house falleth” and “He that is not with me is against me.”  Middle ground exists, but it is quicksand.  Eventually one has to choose a side. It is very clear to us what side we should choose. The only rational side to take is that of God, that side that will lead us to eternal life not that of eternal death.

And, we cannot keep with the opposition.  It is the natural part of the history of the Bible and of life. We have to choose to follow God, as there is no other reasonable option, which will give us the result following God will result in. We must decide who we will follow. We do not have true faith if we do not act upon the words that our lips speak, of believing in Christ and His Father.

Christ himself came not to unite the world, but to divide it, father against son.  In Matthew 10:32-34 he says “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.” He is saying here that he has not come to unite the World, for the World is not on our side. But to clearly divide the world to show who is with God and who is against God. For as earlier explained, one man cannot serve two masters. And also the saying of where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. In this life by reading through Scripture we can easily tell who is for Him and who is against Him. It is simple, who holds to the principles of Scripture is for Him. They who do not hold to them are not with Him. 

You must keep constant vigilance against backsliding, for a fallen Christian is in worse shape than one who was never exposed to The Word. In order to maintain the constant vilgilence you have to be always constantly acting upon your faith. The Epistle and Gospel both talk about the curious dichotomy; you are saved by faith, Jesus’s faith, and your faith alone saves you, not what you do; yet if you have faith, you must act on that faith.  

To maintain your Christian course, you must truly turn a new leaf, and not slip back into the old man. This is one of the most difficult challenges as a Christian, but with the help of the Holy Ghost, we can do it. You must receive the Word, hear it, and act upon it and spread it joyously to others, in order for your faith to have any meaning at all. Otherwise we will have been for the worse than if we never had heard the Good News. It is not a gift to selfishly lock up, but to share and give to others. That is the true joy of the Good News. It is most certainly more blessed to give than to receive in this case.

You must grasp that your acceptance of Jesus Christ as your savior and your repentance is the beginning of your life as a New Man in Jesus.  

Will you slip?  Without doubt.  But, when you do, will you again repent and continue to do your best to follow the Word of God, the Light and the Truth?  All that matters is you get up and do your best not to do what you did to slip. Life is a continuous learning process. Indeed, if you are a Christian that is what you must do.  We will always slip up in our lives, that is in our fallen nature. But we have to get up and get back on track, using the Holy Gospel to guide us like the instruments in an aircraft.  We cannot trust our feeling, but only our instruments (God’s gift of Holy Scripture).  You are called to believe and act on those beliefs to the best of your ability.  If you do not, then prepared as you were for life, you will so be prepared for the pit.  As you read Luke, remember the second half of the Book of Luke is The ACTS of the Apostles, not thoughts, wishes, prayers or meditations. 

For, “blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.”

ACT

It is by our actions we are known.

Be of God - Live of God - Act of God

  

[1] A Collect for Peace – 1928 Book of Common Prayer Page 17

Second Sunday in Lent

Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and Action

Church of the Faithful Centurion

Descanso, California

Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above. 

Consider these words from the Collect:

… we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves; Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul …

In the Collect, we acknowledge to God that we cannot direct our own lives; if we listen to our own selves we are without guidance.  Consider the airplane flying, it orders its movements according to Polaris, the Pole Star of True North.  If a pilot flies guided by his “inner self” he soon knows only where he is: at the controls, and little else.  Like the pilot who needs to know where the True North is so he can orient himself, we need God’s guidance to move towards our goal of eternal life with Him. While flying my aircraft, I have to maintain altitude, heading and airspeed all at the same time. I look outside and re-checked my instruments against what I am seeing to ensure that I am remaining on course. Looking back on these experiences, I thought about how these principles could be applied to being a Christian. The Holy Scriptures are our instruments and we re-check our progress in the world by the instruments of His Word to make sure we are on the right heading and not stagnating in our progress as pilgrims. God is also our infallible co-pilot, always making sure that we stay on course. He has the charts that lead us towards heaven, the Holy Scriptures. We just have to use them.

In order to keep on course we need to rely on God and His Word. We ourselves cannot help ourselves. If we had a power to help ourselves from within us, then Jesus would not have needed to come to die for us, we could have just used this magical power to help ourselves.  We are dependent on God to give us guidance to help us keep on course. We will deviate from our course if we do not have God as our One True Navigator.  We will get easily lost and not find our way back if we do not rely on His Navigational Aids of the Scriptures and the Holy Ghost. When we fail to listen to that guidance, our problems occur.

We have to let Him into our hearts in order to let Him guide us. If we do not do this, then how can we expect to have Him guide us, if we are not open and ready to receive Him and His Guidance? We have to be willing and ready in order to receive His Guidance, then we have to act upon the information His Guidance gives us.

Thus, when Paul tells us to keep our bodies under control of our minds and our minds to be guided by God only, He helps move us on course. This ties in very well with the collect’s request for God to keep us outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls. It links the theme of both spiritual and physical moderation extremely well.  We are to be true and honest in all our dealings, both physical and fiscal and to live our faith.  His Epistle ties in well with the theme of the collect to keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls. To do this, we must live the faith. Living the faith requires us to restrain our bodies and our minds from doing foolish/evil actions which hinder our walk towards heaven. This is a very difficult task, one we will slip up from time to time on, but as long as we repent and return back to the course God has set, all will be well.

Being honest with others and especially ourselves is one of the most important things we can do. If we are not honest with ourselves to start, how can we be honest with others?  For only by living our faith can we demonstrate that we in fact have faith.  For professed faith with no action when you are able to act is not real.  You must actualize what you claim to believe. We are called to be as God wants us to be, not as we would be without His guidance and help.  God does this, not that we would miss fun, but rather that we would enjoy true happiness.

Keeping evil thoughts under control can be a difficult task, but we do not have to face it alone, we have the Holy Ghost in our lives and other Christians and friends that support us and guide us, that can help us battle evil thoughts.  Of course we need to be willing to talk to our good friends within the Church about our problems and evil thoughts and listen to their advice, and more importantly to the Holy Ghost’s advice to combat these evil thoughts and drive away the temptations of the devil.  As we have discussed before, Christianity is not a hermitic religion, but a social one. Christianity did not flourish because its followers were hermits, it flourished because its followers evangelized the religion throughout the known world. It is an active religion and it requires its followers to actively participate in it by spreading the Good news. 

Matthew gives us a fine example of faith that demonstrates how we must be guided by faith in our Lord.  The woman who cries unto Jesus is a Gentile, just like us.  Just like us she longs for His Mercy.  In her case, she asks only for the mercy rejected by others, the crumbs of the Master’s Table[1].  This is the essence of our faith, we are not worthy to dine at His Table, no more than dogs are meet to dine at our table.  Yet, what is left over is more than enough for us.  And we are content with that, knowing what miserable creatures we are.  And, even more important, even knowing what miserable creatures we are, Jesus offers to share His Table with us.  He is not content for us to grovel for His crumbs. If He offers His love for us, should we not love Him back, by acting upon our faith?  If you truly believe, you are compelled to act upon the faith you have. Action is the key principle, the cornerstone of the faith of Christians.  Christ set this example for us by doing, that is action.  This is seen throughout Scripture, but nowhere is it as clear as His Action of sacrificing Himself for our sins on the Cross. This is the prime example of action not just diction. Action is far more important than diction only. Diction is nice, but it needs to be paired with Action in order for it to have any sort of meaning.

It is also important to understand if one loves God, He still has the exact same amount of love available for any other person or group.  His love is infinite, even if it wasn’t, love multiplies in use! We do not have to worry about God running out of love at all. There is more than enough to go around!

Recognize how poorly you do with your own guidance, accept His Guidance, stay on course and accept the fruits of that action.

There is but one way to heaven.

That easy to find, easy to follow, easy to hike path does not lead to the summit where eternal life in the real world awaits.  Open your heart to the Holy Ghost, use His Power to follow our Lord to God who awaits in heaven.

The time is now, not tomorrow.  The time has come, indeed.  How will you ACT?

It is by our actions we are known.

Be of God - Live of God - Act of God

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[1] Sound familiar?  Check out the Prayer of Humble Access, Holy Communion, BCP Page 82.

First Sunday in Lent

Sermon – Reverend Jack Arnold - Time and Action

Church of the Faithful Centurion

Descanso, California

Today’s sermon brought the Collect, Epistle and Gospel together and is partly contained in the forewords above. 

Consider these words from the Collect:

… Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness, and true holiness, to thy honour and glory …

In the Collect, we ask God to help us change our natural evil tendencies so we can live life here His way and honor His wishes so we can be truly happy.  Without His help, we end up with what we want, not what we need.  Lent is the time in which we focus on fighting our sinful selves and working with the Holy Ghost to reconcile us with what God wants for us. What we want is not the same as what we need. We are asking him to help us fight our human nature and follow His divine nature, we are attempting to replace our nature with that of God’s. It is a long and difficult road we must travel, doing this, but we are going to be much happier in the long run if we at least do our best. Do or do not, there is no try, Yoda is quoted as saying, and I find it applicable here and in my own life. We have to act, not just say we are going to act, but we must physically perform ACTIONS!

                                 

Want and Need; two words, used interchangeably in both our speech and thought that do not mean the same thing.  Think about that!

Following the thought of the Collect, Paul asks us to be worthy of the grace God has given us.  He tells the people when they needed him, He was there.  Following his example, we need to be there for those around us.  We must not frustrate God’s work by showing up late, or not at all. It all goes back to Jesus’ saying, No man can serve two masters. We have to make a choice in this life and decide whom we are to serve, God or the Devil, and then act on it.  Our life as a Christian depends on our actions here on Earth. Our actions here on earth reveal who we truly serve God or Satan. The Holy Ghost will help us guide us towards actions that serve God, but we have to let Him into our hearts.

There is only one good choice for us and that is to serve God, of course. Paul is advising people they can’t simply hold a position between the two, for there is no middle ground here. We have to be on one side or the other. It is a constant truth that we will always be largely outnumbered in this world by the enemies of God.  

It goes along with the saying, The best defense is a good offense. So, too, is it in this hostile world. While spreading the Word we need to be always going on the offense, spreading it to those who have not heard it. We have to always keep moving, or else we will be overrun by the Forces of Satan. We have to do this by doing actions that are consistent with His Word and show that we truly believe in Him and not just say we do.

In this life, we are constantly being evaluated by those around us and also God. He is watching us to see how we perform with the talents He has given us. It is truly is a hard battle we are fighting, against the forces of wickedness, of the Devil, all across the globe.  To paraphrase Winston Churchill, we must never never never ever give up in the battle against the forces of darkness. We are on the side of the Word, of the Light and in the end we will prevail.

Our actions will reflect whom we truly serve,  God or the Forces of Satan. Which side will you serve? You in the end have to choose one side or another. Pick the winning side now, which is the Forces of God, and you will have a rich everlasting life. The key to winning this battle for souls is to never ever ever give up and to trust in God and Dread Naught. 

We have been given eternal salvation by Jesus’ sacrifice, the understanding of the Gospel by the Holy Ghost.  We are at this time dying here on earth, yet progressing towards eternal life in the next world, in Jesus’ World, with His help. While we may never be wealthy here on earth, our actions can make our fellow Christians wealthy in spirit beyond measure.  

If you claim to be a Christian, you know what is right.  If you are a Christian, you do what is right, you don’t take a vote to see what the right course of action may be. Doing what is right does not depend on public opinion and we must do the right thing. In fact the public opinion oft times is rather in the wrong; as we can see with many people’s opinions on slavery, homosexual marriage and abortion  today. It does not matter what others’ opinions are, that does not change the universal truth of God and His Message. We will be despised because of the opinions we hold from understanding the Gospel and His Message, from being on the side of righteousness. 

When the Devil attempted to tempt Christ, he showed how little he knows of Him.  If we emulate our Lord, it shows how little the Devil will be able to tempt us with his deceit. If we follow Him we will be able to withstand any temptation that arises as our Lord showed for us in the desert 2,000 years ago. 

Consider how little the Devil really offers you and how much Christ offers, the temptation is ever so much less.  The Devil is often referred to as the Deceiver or Dissimulator.  His forte is deception; he seems to be one thing, but is another.  He offers what he has no intention or ability to deliver. He actually has zero ability to deliver on his large promises, he has no right to give away what is not his! 

The Devil clearly knows Jesus is the Son of God.  There is no doubt in his mind.  So, having understood that, consider what he offers Jesus in temptation.  

Remember, Jesus has fasted 40 days OF HIS OWN CHOICE; now comes the devil daring Him to show His Power by turning the stone into bread.  This to the Son of He who delivered manna daily to the Jews in the wilderness for 40 years.  

Cast thyself down and let angels catch thee; this to He who walked on water.

Up to the mountain lookout – Here is it all yours if you worship me.  This to He, who as it says in Psalm 95:

I

N his hand are all the corners of the earth; * and the strength of the hills is his also.

The sea is his, and he made it; * and his hands prepared the dry land.

O come, let us worship and fall down, * and kneel before the Lord our Maker.

For he is the Lord our God; * and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

The devil promised Jesus nothing that was his to give, nothing that would help Jesus in the real world beyond the Shadowlands.  He never does.  The devil is all about shortcuts.  Remember, if the shortcut was the best way, it would not be a shortcut. The devil will not help us at all in the long run, if you look at things from the eternal perspective. That is what we need to keep in mind every time he tempts us. 

The temptation of Jesus is no different than the Devil’s attempt to tempt us!  The Devil never delivers what we need, only what we, in our imperfection, want.  He can’t understand what we really need, he only knows what we want. This is an advantage we have over him. We understand what we truly need; if we remember it, then holding off against the temptations is easier. Remember as little as the Devil understands of Christ, the same way, as we are in God, so he understands little of us.  He will never offer you real help.  Remember that and the temptation is ever so much less.

Or, as my grandfather said, “Keep your eye on the donut, not on the hole”

There is but one way to heaven.

That easy to find, easy to follow, easy to hike path does not lead to the summit where eternal life in the real world awaits.  Open your heart to the Holy Ghost, use His Power to follow our Lord to God who awaits in heaven.

The time is now, not tomorrow.  The time has come, indeed.  How will you ACT?

It is by our actions we are known.

Be of God - Live of God - Act of God