Curse Words or Bless Words?

Imagine that person you know who cusses the most.  He or she can’t speak a sentence that would not be bleeped for television.  Some people use so many four-letter words, you lose track of what they are trying to say, their sentences being so filled with meaningless interjections that the subject and verb are lost in the maelstrom.  And it’s not just the language.  If you look deeper, there is often bitterness in their hearts.  Bitterness and a deep anger, like the red heat of a blacksmith’s furnace. 

Sometimes those among us with the most foul mouths are actually the most upset.  Some have suffered abuse by a parent or similar childhood trauma.  And with their heart broken their internal life is agony.  The easiest quick-fix for that hurt is to bury it under crusty, harsh language, and a cynical, sarcastic approach to life: never trusting, never expecting good, never allowing yourself hope.

The trouble is, you must heal the heart.  A lifetime of bitter, angry curses will only destroy the curse-er … and everyone close to him.

The Bible tells the story of two cursers, Nabal and Shimei, and both suffered terrible deaths.

“He loved cursing—let it fall on him.  He took no delight in blessing—let it be far from him.  He wore cursing like his coat—let it enter his body like water and go into his bones like oil. Let it be like a robe he wraps around himself, like a belt he always wears” Psalm 109:17-19.

I like the imagery in verse 19: “let it be like a robe he wraps around himself.” 

Imagine wrapping yourself in a robe of your own words.  Because that is what life is.  If you are a bless-er, you will be blessed.  But if you are a curse-er, you will be cursed.  Consider Grandpa.  He never spoke a single cuss word in the fifty-five years I knew him.  Not one.  He spoke words of blessing and goodness, and what happened? As he aged, he grew happier and more cheerful. 

Watch your language—because life will make you wrap it around yourself like a robe.  (Do you really want to dress in that filth?)

ΑΩ

Passing the Baton.

I remember running relays in track.  We had to master the handoff.  If you dropped the baton, you had to pick it up—and that would cost you precious time.  The hander and the handee had to time things just right.  Both need to be running the same speed.  If the one in back catches up, they will collide.  But if the one in front is too far out in front, they will never make the handoff.  Passing the baton is an art that can make or break a relay team.

That’s why we use the term “pass the baton” as a metaphor in so many other areas.  Every year I taught high school someone required me to draft an essay on my teaching philosophy.  I always wrote an extended metaphor about “passing the baton” of Western culture.

Biblical leaders handed off even more, trusting the future of the nation to the young leader who would replace them.  Moses gave an encouraging word to his protégé, Joshua.  And David did the same with his son Solomon.  If you were David, what “baton” would you pass to your son, Solomon? 

“Above all, may the Lord give you insight and understanding when He puts you in charge of Israel so that you may keep the law of the Lord your God. Then you will succeed if you carefully follow the statutes and ordinances the Lord commanded Moses for Israel. Be strong and courageous.  Don’t be afraid or discouraged” 1 Chronicles 22:11-13.

David tells Solomon that a leader should:

  1. Seek insight from God.
  2. Obey God’s law.
  3. Be strong.
  4. Be brave.
  5. Don’t let yourself become afraid or discouraged.

As a son who will bury his father next week, I’ve been thinking a lot about the generations—about my father and his father before him—and that one day I will pass the baton to the next generation.  And I agree with David: Seek God’s wisdom (especially by studying His word), obey Him, and face the future with courage.

ΑΩ

Things Are Gonna Get Better.

Sometimes it’s hard.  It just is. There is the grief of emotional loss.  There is the pressure of responsibilities.  There are health concerns and disappointed hopes and crushed dreams.  You gained weight when you were trying to lose it.  You gave up three walks when you had a chance to strike them out.  Another day is over and again it is too late to hope for a good night’s rest.  Sometimes it’s hard.

But things are gonna get better!  It won’t stay dark forever—the sun always comes up.  Work will ease up.  You will get some rest and have some fun and recharge your batteries and feel refreshed. 

Don’t let temporary burdens steal your joy. 

Sure, it’s a cliché, but remember: tough times never last, but tough people do!

“Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning!” Psalm 30:5. 

Are you struggling? Don’t give up!  Your joy will return, no matter how hard this is, or how long you have suffered.  When Israel was released from Babylonian captivity, they could not believe their joy. 

“When the Lord brought back the captives of Zion, we were like those who dream. Our mouths were filled with laughter, and our tongues with joyful shouting…. Those who sow in tears, shall reap with joyful shouting.  He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, shall come again with a shout of joy, bringing his harvest with him” Psalm 126:1-2,5-6.

The good times are easy, right? What we need to know is how to handle the bad times.  It’s simple: GRATITUDE.  Count your blessings.  Rejoice. Thank God for EVERYTHING He has done and everything He is doing and everyone in your life.  Thankfulness changes your attitude as dramatically as humility—everything in your life looks different through the lens of thankfulness.  And gratitude brings true joy.  “In everything give thanks” 1 Thessalonians 5:18.

Thank you, God, for the challenges that draw us closer to You.  Remind us to practice thankfulness in all things.

ΑΩ

Fresh Start.

I was a pouter. As a child, I could get mad about something at night and hold on to it till bedtime. But no matter how determined I was to stay mad, I knew that when I woke up it would be gone. Some nights I got mad at myself that I couldn’t STAY mad!  Every day was a fresh start, even if I did not want a fresh start. The whole family was that way—no grudges. I would walk into the kitchen on a cold Monday morning—angry that I had to get up and go to that place that felt like jail—and my dad would look up from the newspaper and practically shout, “Well, Good MORN-ing!” I would barely mumble a reply.  I was the worst at mornings.

But his greeting mattered.  It let me know he had forgotten whatever happened the day before. I knew I was starting the day with a clean slate. My father would NEVER hang on to something from the day before.

Our Heavenly Father is the same way. He is not Santa Claus, making a list of every naughty thing you ever did. Do our sins matter? Yes. Do our sins cause suffering? Yes, to ourselves and others.  Do our sins have consequences? Yes. 

But if you have surrendered your life—all of who you are including your gifts, talents, dreams, plans, and ambitions; and everything inside you, including mind, body, soul, and spirit; and all of your past and all of your future, including your eternity—if you have truly surrendered ALL to Jesus, then your sins are gone. When God looks at you, He sees not your sin, but His own holiness.  And He is pleased to show you favor.

“His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime” Psalm 30:5.

God, thank you for your mercy and forgiveness! Help us to walk in grace, holiness, and purity, to know that you are pleased with us, and to make better choices because we are no longer burdened by sin and guilt.

ΑΩ

It is Scary to Choose Your Own Punishment.

Once when David sinned against God, the prophet came to him with a message. God was going to let David choose his own punishment. That is scary.

“Do you want three years of famine to come on the land, to flee from your foes for three months while they pursue you, or to have a plague in your land for three days?” 2 Samuel 24:13.

It’s a tough decision, huh? Think about it…. Which would you choose and why?

So what did David do?

“David answered, ‘I have great anxiety! Please let me fall into the Lord’s hands because His mercies are great, but don’t let me fall into human hands’” verse 14.

David realized that God is wiser and more merciful than David. So he says, “God, I trust you, and I want You to choose.”

So God sent the three-day plague. I think that proves that God knows a quick punishment is better than something long and drawn-out.

APPLICATION?

I think this applies to how we punish children. A spanking, handled appropriately, is a better punishment than grounding because it is short-lived. When children are grounded, they spend days, weeks, sometimes months, under a cloud. They feel: I am not forgiven, or accepted, or trusted, because I am bad.


By contrast, a well-delivered spanking is scary, but you can be hugging your parents again seconds later, as they wipe your tears. As my college psychology professor used to say, “Punishment should be SWIFT, SEVERE, and SOON OVER.”

“For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor, a lifetime.

Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Psalm 30:5.

God, thank you for your mercy. Thank you that even when you have to punish us, you are kind and gentle and merciful and understanding. I would rather be in trouble with You than any human authority—and that is remarkable. I praise You for Your mercy, grace, and forgiveness.

ΑΩ

God is Awesome. Psalm 97.

He is, you know? Sometimes, that is enough. Always, that should be enough. Anyone who speaks often to young people will be looking at every verse of the Bible to find a point that can be APPLIED to life. For example, when you read a verse about the value God places on honesty, the APPLICATION is to always tell the truth. Your mom knows: we are ALWAYS looking for application.

But sometimes you need to just worship God and allow yourself to be in awe of His power and presence and might. If you saw Him, you would fall on your face before Him. You would not ask “but how can I apply this to my life?”

Think about the amazing power and might and energy of the God who created the universe. He created the stars, the sun, and fire itself. Look at the fire in these verses, and worship this God who could toast you in a second, but died for you instead:

“Clouds and thick darkness surround Him;

Righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne.

Fire goes before Him and burns up His foes on every side.

His lightning lights up the world; the earth sees and trembles.

The mountains melt like wax at the presence of the Lord—

At the presence of the Lord of all the earth.

Hate evil, you who love the Lord!

He protects the lives of His godly ones;

He rescues them from the power of the wicked.

Light dawns for the righteous, gladness for the upright in heart.”

Psalm 97:2-5, 10-11.

Pray. Dear God, help us to just stop and worship You, to have some small idea of how amazing You are! Help us to see your FIRE and Your power and Your incredible ENERGY. You are a consuming fire. We praise You, God, because You are an all-consuming FIRE as it says in Hebrews 12:29: “Our God is a consuming fire.” Consume what is negative in us. Burn up the things that keep us from You. We praise You.

ΑΩ

Christians Should Hate More.

How do you like that title? True or false? I read an article with that title today, and I believe it is true. We need to hate EVIL a lot more than we do.

Sure, God wants us to love people. But He commands us to hate sin. Do you hate sin? Murder, perhaps? Rape? Pedophilia? Human trafficking? Genocide? Sure, you hate the big sins. But do you hate every form of evil? It all has consequences. And the supposedly “small” sins always lead to bigger and bigger sins. Do you think pedophiles and rapists just woke up that way at age 13? They did not. They arrived there gradually, after years of worse and worse pornography, often coupled with abuse, until “normal” lust no longer satisfied their now unspeakably evil appetites.

That can happen to you, too. Surely you have seen that in your own life: a “mild” sin no longer satisfies, and you find yourself going places in your mind (or online) that you swore you would never go. You thought you hated that level of evil. Now you’re participating in it.

Does the Bible back me up on this? Does God’s Word really encourage hate? You bet it does. God is HOLY. He hates evil. He judged evil at the cross. And we are called to be like Him, to judge evil, to “call it out” and to hate it, loathe it, detest it.

Psalm 97:10 says, “Hate evil, you who love the Lord.” HATE IT!

Romans 12:9 says, “Abhor what is evil, cling to what is good.”

Proverbs 8:13 says, “To fear the Lord is to HATE EVIL.”

Hebrews 1:9 explains that God blessed Jesus with more joy than any other man who ever lived. Why? “Because He loved righteousness and hated lawlessness.” Jesus hated evil and God blessed Him for it.

Finally, consider Ezekiel 35:6. Because an enemy nation had not hated bloodshed, God says He will send THEM bloodshed. “Because you have not hated bloodshed, bloodshed will pursue you.” In other words, the sin you tolerate will be the sin that destroys you.

Think about that: THE SIN THAT YOU TOLERATE WILL BE THE SIN THAT DESTROYS YOU.

You must hate evil. Hate it.

Pray. Ask God to fill you with His holy hatred for sin. Sin steals, sin kills, sin destroys. God hates it. Ask Him to help you hate it.

ΑΩ

Hate the Sin.

Christians should “hate the sin but love the sinner.”  It may be a cliché, but I can’t find anything wrong with it.  Activists have no problem with the suggestion that Christians ought to LOVE THE SINNER.  Jesus LOVED THE SINNERS.  He ate with sinners, visited the homes of sinners, surrounded Himself with sinners.    

It is harder to hate the sin.  We hate murder, rape, and pedophilia.  We hate seeing the rich and powerful take advantage of the poor and helpless.  We hate obvious, egregious sins. 

We also hate the sins that do not tempt us.  It is easy to hate gluttony if you have never been tempted by food.  It is easy to hate lust if your real problem is greed.  It is easy to hate pride if your secret sin is an addiction to wine. 

But God calls us to hate ALL sin.  To hate our own sin.  Can you hate your tendency to gossip? Can you hate your selfishness, ego, greed, lust?  Are you willing to hate those times when you are judgmental? When you “write off” those who sin in areas where you believe yourself to be strong?  We ALL sin.  We ALL cross the line. Can you see that sorting people into “acceptable” and “unacceptable” based on which lines they cross is sinfully placing yourself on God’s throne, as though you were the One True and Holy Judge?

The Christian life is not about staying within Christian lines, or adopting the right beliefs.  God is not PRIMARILY interested in your politics, your religious doctrine, or your views about pop culture, though those things matter.  The Christian life is PRIMARILY about becoming conformed to the image of Christ, Romans 8:29.

Are you becoming more like Jesus?  Does it show in your heart and your actions?  Do you hate your own judgmentalness enough to be kind?

“Hate [your own] evil, you who love the Lord” Psalm 97:10.

ΑΩ

This is a Rescue!

John Eldredge compares the saving work of Jesus to the work of Tom Hanks and his cohort in the film SAVING PRIVATE RYAN.  Jesus is not the Fuller Brush man, knocking on a housewife’s door to sell her a new broom.  He’s not the ice cream man, trolling the neighborhood, offering something sweet to anyone who might care for it.  Jesus is a WARRIOR.  And His saving work is “a daring rescue behind enemy lines.” Coming to earth to battle the enemy and die for those He would save—that is no casual thing.  Have you seen the pitiful paintings of Jesus—a pale-skinned, effeminate man with his head in the clouds like some Eastern mystic, an ascetic too skinny to stand under his own power, much less work as a carpenter?  Jesus was never that guy.  He was a warrior!  “The Lord is a WARRIOR!” Exodus 15:3. 

David understands the daring rescue by a powerful warrior.  Read this paraphrase and consider what a different picture of God David paints here from the Shepherd of Psalm 23:

The waves of death engulfed me, the floods of destruction terrified me. Death had me tangled in its ropes, trapped and drowning. In my distress I cried out to God and He heard me. “Then the earth shook and quaked, the foundations of heaven were trembling” because He was angry. Smoke snorted from His nostrils, fire raged from His mouth, kindling everything. He bent the heavens and came down, He rode on a cherub and flew.  “The Lord thundered from heaven,” He shot arrows and threw lightning. He split the earth to its foundations. He reached down and took me and drew me out of the waters and rescued me. “He rescued me, because He delighted in me” 2 Samuel 22:5-20.

Now THAT is a rescue.

God loves you—and He is the WARRIOR who fights for you!

God, help us love you as our tender shepherd, and revere and fear you as the warrior who rescues us—even from our own bad choices.

ΑΩ

Fresh Start.

I was a pouter. As a child, I could get mad about something at night and hold on to it till bedtime. But no matter how determined I was to stay mad, I knew that when I woke up it would be gone. Some nights I got mad at myself that I couldn’t STAY mad!  Every day was a fresh start, even if I did not want a fresh start. The whole family was that way—no grudges. I would walk into the kitchen on a cold Monday morning—angry that I had to get up and go to that place that felt like jail—and my dad would look up from the newspaper and practically shout, “Well, Good MORN-ing!” I would barely mumble a reply.  I was the worst at mornings.

But my father’s warm greeting mattered.  It let me know he had forgotten whatever happened the day before. I knew I was starting the day with a clean slate. My dad would NEVER hang on to something from the day before.

Our Heavenly Father is the same way. He is not Santa Claus, making a list of every naughty thing you ever did. Do our sins matter? Yes. Do our sins cause suffering? Yes, to ourselves and others.  Do our sins have consequences? Yes. 

But if you have surrendered your life—all of who you are including your gifts, talents, dreams, plans, and ambitions; and everything inside you, including mind, body, soul, and spirit; and all of your past and all of your future, including your eternity—if you have truly surrendered ALL to Jesus, then your sins are gone. When God looks at you, He sees not your sin, but His own holiness.  And He is pleased to show you favor.

“His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor lasts a lifetime” Psalm 30:5.

God, thank you for your mercy and forgiveness! Help us to walk in grace, holiness, and purity, to know that you are pleased with us, and to make better choices because we are no longer burdened by sin and guilt.

ΑΩ