The Two Witnesses Who Helped Change My Life July 30, 2019
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Religion, Uncategorized.Tags: born again, depression, despair, Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, Salvation, the Gospel, the joy of the Lord, two witnesses
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If it’s my way or the high way I choose the High Way; God’s way. You see I tried my way and it led to depression, despair, and loneliness. The best I could figure out is if this is all there is let’s roll out the barrels and have a party. My life before Christ was like the meaningless forever party at The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe in Douglas Adam’s iconic Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The band plays on, the people careen through life in a mad dash to nowhere, everyone is laughing, smiling, miserable, and heading toward oblivion.
In the doomed life without Christ people mistake happiness and laughter for joy, and waste their lives trying to tickle themselves to death.
So after thirty wasted years sacrificed on an altar of senseless, self-indulgent, self-destructive tickling I chose the High Way. I chose to make Jesus the Lord of my life because I believe in my heart God has raised Him from the dead. I came to believe Jesus offered Himself up as a sinless sacrifice to pay the price of not just my sin but of everyone’s sin. I came to understand that the wall of separation caused by sin between humanity and God was broken down and we can all be united with Him. I embraced the truth that we can become His children. We no longer are strangers but members of His family welcome to walk boldly into our Daddy’s throne room.
Have you ever felt as if there’s no hope? Don’t be fooled by the god of this world. There is hope. Have you ever felt like you were too far gone, too wrong to ever be right again? Don’t be fooled by the confusing systems of laws that litter this world, or by gnawing feelings of guilt. We can be right with God.
Christ told us to take His light to the world and in our finite wisdom we constantly attempt to build lamps. They may provide light but it’s not His light. The bewildering mazes of religious laws are paths built by men. The feelings of guilt that inform us we have a consciousness of sin are themselves pinpricks and poundings delivered by God to prod us into the way, His way, the High Way. They don’t mean we’re lost forever. It’s just the opposite. They mean God hasn’t given up on us yet.
And if God hasn’t given up on us why should we give up on God?
Happiness can be affected by what we had for dinner last night. Did it taste good? Did it sit well or did it give us indigestion? Happiness can be impacted by whether or not we’re rich or poor, sick or healthy or any combination of things that are here today and gone tomorrow. Laughter can be a mask to hide the tears.
But joy is something else again. Joy is rooted in our relationship with God, and since the world didn’t give it to us the world can’t take it away. That’s why it’s called the joy that passes all understanding.
This God given joy is a powerful life changing thing.
Seeing this joy in action when I was an unbeliever is one of the things that eventually convinced me the Bible was true, salvation was real, and I could have it if I wanted it.
When I was at the depth of my unbelief, calling myself an atheist and a hater of all things godly I witnessed people live through the birth of a very special child. One whose physical challenges led to a short life among us but a life having a major impact on at least one life I know of: mine. His parents loved that child. They praised God for that child. They gave all they had to care for that child. And when that child passed leaving them physically, emotionally, and financially drained they held a celebration to praise God for blessing them in such a great way.
I can remember thinking they were crazy. I shook my head and wondered how anyone could be so different from everyone else I’d ever known. I didn’t know it at the time but I was a witness to people living out the reality of a passage from the book of Job who was the greatest of all the people of the East.
After Job lost everything; his home, his children, and all his wealth he was struck with painful boils from the sole of his feet to the crown of his head. While sitting in the midst of the ashes of his life he took a broken piece of pottery to scrape off the scabs his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast to your integrity? Curse God and die!” which is what the world was screaming at the two followers of Christ with their family disrupted, their finances destroyed, and their child dead. These born-again believers said with their actions to the world what Job replied to his wife, “You speak as one of the foolish women speaks. Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?”
Years later as I reflected upon whether or not it was possible to live for God in a fallen world the memory of those two saints, Judy and Harry, praising God for blessings in the middle of what the fallen world saw as a curse I knew it was possible. Now after forty years of walking with my hand in the hand of the Man who stilled the sea I know it from personal experience.
Choose God and accept His gift of salvation not for what we’ve done but because of what Jesus did. He paid the price for our lifetime membership in the family of God, but we still may have to pay some dues down here. If we trust in Him when the wind and the waves smash against us we’ll stand like a house built on a rock. If we choose to give our lives to God in Jesus we get them back again better and brighter than we could ever imagine. If we instead try to keep our lives for ourselves we lose everything, and when the wind and the waves smash against us we’ll crumble like a house built upon the sand.
We never know who’s watching. We never know what someone else may see. So let’s quit tickling ourselves to death, find the joy of the Lord which is our strength and let the joy, joy, joy of the Lord down in our souls and watch our lives become the witness He’s called us to be.
Thank you Judy and Harry for being two witnesses who helped change my life. I praise God for you both, and I love you with the love of the Lord.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
We’ve All Had an Apple Out of That Sack July 16, 2019
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Religion, Uncategorized.Tags: born again, Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, Salvation, the book of Judges, the Epistles, the Gospel
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When I first gave my life to Christ I felt so incredibly clean, so new, and fresh it was truly like being born-again. My old life was washed away and I was a babe in Christ.
Then as I devoured His Word reading, meditating, and praying it into the very fabric of my life it changed me even more. I was miraculously healed of alcoholism. Lifetime habits of chemical abuse and drug addiction were washed away in the life-giving flood of Christ’s love.
I was saved reading and believing the Gospels. The New Testament starts with the birth of Jesus. It tells the whole story of His sinless life. It reveals His sacrificial death. And it imparts life changing reality of His life giving resurrection and ascension into heaven. But it doesn’t end there.
After the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John the New Testament continues with the story of the spreading of the sin shattering story of Jesus from Jerusalem to Rome in the Acts of the Apostles a God breathed History that is truly His Story.
Secular History tells us that the few followers of Jesus shared the good news of freedom from the curse of sin, the empowerment of holiness, and the joy of salvation and that this message of hope spread like wildfire. It couldn’t be contained by persecution. It couldn’t be squelched by religion. Yes, this secular History tells us that this obscure faith movement birthed in an out-of-the-way corner of a vast empire marched from person-to-person and within 300 years became the official religion of Caesar.
Secular History can tell us what happened; however, it takes the New Testament to tell us why. We’ve all heard it said that the Gospel is good news. As one popular song tells us today, “It’s not good news. It’s the best news ever.”
In the beginning, back in the garden, man chose not to obey God but instead to follow his own lusts and desires chasing into a path that has forever led us away from God. We can blame Satan who the Bible tells us tempted Eve into disobedience but it was Adam whose willful choice to follow his own desire to be with his wife instead of with God that crossed the threshold and saw a barrier of sin separate us from our sinless God. There was no way back. There was no way to wash the stain from our spirit. We were no longer united with our creator we were instead united with the father of lies.
Now here’s the why: God in His unsearchable love came Himself in the form of Jesus born of a woman to live a sinless life that He willingly sacrificed to pay the price. Now anyone who will confess Jesus as the Lord, the leader, the master of their life and who believes that God raised Jesus from the dead is forgiven of all sin and re-united with God. That’s it. That’s the best news ever.
I was changed by systematic and prolonged study of the Epistles: the letters of the first followers of Jesus to those who believed through their ministry.
After this saturated my life and I began taking my first steps into a world which was now the Kingdom of God I began my study of the Old Testament.
When I read the story of Jacob and Esau, the children of Isaac and the twin sons of Abraham that expands the promise of God to send a Savior which is the essence of the entire Old Testament, I came across the line, “I loved Jacob and hated Esau.” This was a puzzle. Because when you read about these two brothers it soon becomes evident that Jacob was a lying, cheating, deceiving, schemer and Esau was a nice guy who obeyed his parents and seemed to live a godly life. Why would God choose Jacob over Esau?
Esau esteemed his birthright, which was the promise of God flowing into its third generation so lightly he was willing to trade his place as the eldest child and heir for one single bowl of stew. He threw away eternal blessing for instant gratification.
Seeing this I thought what a fool Esau was. How lacking in faith and fortitude it was no wonder God chose Jacob to be the child of promise, the heir whose bloodline would one day produce Jesus.
It was only as the years passed as I began to live out my own version of the Book of Judges I stumbled and fell. God renewed me over and over. It was then that I came to realize how easy it is for the followers of Christ to find themselves in the path of easy going Esau instead of climbing the ladder of faith with Jacob.
We may not trade our eternal inheritance for a bowl of stew but how many of us choose the things of this world over the things of God? How easy it is to find ourselves drowning in diversions instead of immersed in the Word? Majoring on minors instead of dedicated to doing the works God has called us to do. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, “Are we consumed by the news or devouring the Word?” “Are we serving ourselves at the all-you-can-eat buffet of modern culture or are we helping to seat others at the wedding feast of the King?”
When I first read the Book of Judges and how the Israelites of old after generations of miracles culminating in finding the promised land turned away from God, fell under the heel of oppressors, begged for deliverance, and then after God delivered them forgot about God and wandered off again, and again, and again I felt if I’d been God I would’ve written them off and started over. In the first flush of my regenerated life of joy I couldn’t understand how God could just keep kissing the hand that abused Him.
In time my own book of judges taught me that it’s God’s love that keeps Him constantly ready to accept us back. I also learned that I was really happy that He never gave up on those Israelites and that He nave gives up on me.
Esau gave away an eternal promise for something that looked good, smelled good, and tasted good. But it was also something that perished with the using. He was weak, he was a fool, and we’ve all had an apple out of that sack.
If you’ve wandered off into the dead-end trails of self-indulgence in the trackless waste which is the world as I have time after time don’t despair. We shouldn’t give up on ourselves because God will never give up on us. As many times as we turn away from the world to face God He’s there ever ready and eager to take us back. Or as a current song tells us, “You can never fall too hard, so fast, so far that you can’t get back when you’re lost. Where you are is never too late, so bad, so much that you can’t change who you are. You can change who you are.”
How do we change who we are? We Let Jesus in and He does all the remodeling for us. That’s that best news ever you’ve been hearing about.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2019 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook or Twitter @ Drrobertowens or visit Dr. Owens Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Dr. Owens’ Newest Book July 9, 2019
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In America’s Armageddon the fifth volume in the America’s Trojan War Series America splinters as the descendants of the Pioneers, the Founders, and the Framers stand up to be counted. President Bryan, General Stando, and their whole corrupt regime fight to maintain their grip on the throat of a free nation. The battle between the various sides increasingly becomes a war between light and darkness, between good and evil, and a struggle to the death in the midst of a struggle for life.
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