The Day I Was Born Again September 8, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: born again, Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, Salvation
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I can remember when I was born-again. I came up from me knees a new creature living in a new creation, old things had passed away and everything had become new. I had this life changing experience in a church where that kind of thing was not supposed to happen.
In this church they shared the Lord’s Supper at every service. This was the first time I felt I was ready to partake of the bread and wine. While kneeling at the altar rail I reflected upon my recent study of the four Gospels. I had come to a place where I thought this Gospel is either the truth or it’s a lie. If it’s the truth it is undoubtedly the most important message ever delivered. If it was a lie, it was just one among many.
As a person who had studied History daily for many years, I knew that all of the writers of the Gospels had been martyred. This led me to reflect, “If these men had written a lie, they would have known it was a lie and that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, there is no salvation, and the whole thing was a hoax.”
I also knew that before they were martyred, they were given a choice, say what they’d written was a lie and worship the emperor or stand by what they’d written and die. All of them chose to die. The thought that four men would all choose to die to promote or perpetuate a hoax didn’t sound or feel believable to me.
All this had been running round and round in my mind for weeks. Finally, as I knelt at that altar I decided, “It has to be true.” Right then and there I prayed, “Jesus, I want you to be the Lord of my life. I want to give my life to you. I repent of my sins, and I ask you to save me.” That was it. I believed God had raised Jesus from the grave and I accepted Him as my Lord.
Instantly I was translated into an ecstasy of joy. I raised my hands and I praised God for hearing my prayer and for saving me. From that moment on I knew beyond all doubt that Jesus is God, that He came to earth to save the lost, and that He will meet us wherever we are and accept us no matter what we’ve done. From that moment to this I have known the intimacies of the new birth and no one nor no thing can ever separate me from my Savior.
That was what happened on the inside deep within my being as my spirit which had been dead to God came alive. On the outside I stayed at the altar after everyone else left and returned to their seats. I stayed there throughout the rest of the service and for about another half hour after everyone left the sanctuary and moved into the fellowship hall.
I was completely oblivious to any sound or movement around me. I had no awareness of the passage of time. I was bathed in the joy of God, surrounded by His presence, communing with my Savior, wrapped in His love.
When I returned to normal consciousness I got up, I looked around dumbfounded at the empty sanctuary. To me I had only been at the altar for a few moments. I followed the sound of people talking into the fellowship hall. As I entered, I began praising God. I told them all, “I’ve just been born again!”
Everyone, the pastor included looked at me as if I was crazy. You would have thought I had just said, “A unicorn jumped over a rainbow and gave me some candy.” The President of the Church Council told me, “We don’t go for any of that Born-Again nonsense here. If you’re going to act like that drag it down the street someplace else.”
I was confused. From my reading of the scriptures everyone must be born again if they want to see God and His kingdom and here was a leader in the Church telling me this life changing experience was somehow out of place in this particular church.
But I knew what I had just experienced, and no one was going to convince me that God hadn’t just touched me, that He hadn’t wiped away my guilt, and made me new. No one could convince me that I hadn’t just been born again.
The Pastor seeing my look of confusion took me aside and asked me what had happened. When I described the miracle as clearly as I could he told me it was probably an emotional response to a thought-provoking sermon.
Imagine if you lived on an island where everyone crawls instead of walks. It has always been this way, and this is the only way anyone can ever remember it being. Then one day a person stands up and starts to walk. Everyone is shocked. They are scandalized. The leaders of the community express the thoughts of the majority, “I mean whoever heard of such a thing, someone walking instead of crawling.” Turning on the lone walker they cry in unison, “Get back down here and crawl like you’re supposed to! What if others start this walking business? Do you want to destroy our traditions? What if the children see you and start walking instead of crawling?”
It’s not that crawling is better than walking. We all know that it isn’t. It’s just that this is the way things have always been so that is seen as the way they should be. Anything different is rejected out of hand, no consideration, no inner reflection, no comparison of two different options just instantaneous and total rejection.
This is just how it seems when people who have never experienced the new birth, have never experienced the unrivaled intimacies of a loving God bringing life to the dead spirit we inherited from Adam try to tell us who have, to settle down and follow traditions.
Instead of the eternal everlasting death we all deserve due to our Adamic inheritance and our own sin God in His infinite mercy and love gives us eternal life. And He has not only given us life He gives us the very life of Christ the life that defeated death. In a foreshadowing of the life-giving power of Christ once some Israelites were about to burry a man when a sudden attack of the enemy forced them to forego using a new grave and they placed the body in the tomb of Elisha the prophet. As soon as the body of the dead man touched the bones of the prophet the man came back to life. And so it is with every spiritually dead person who comes to the cross of Christ who surrenders themselves and accepts Jesus as Lord.
We must never let anyone convince us that humanity can be perfected outside of God’s plan of salvation and through Jesus Christ. Nothing, not education, politics, economics, genetic engineering, theology, philosophy, or psychology can forge a way to life for the spiritually dead except through Christ. All of these things can be helpful tools. They can all help us make sense of a fallen and disordered world. But they cannot save us. They cannot change us from fallen and lost people into what we were created to be: children of the Most High God.
And it is purely through grace that this is even possible. We cannot earn our way. There is no twelve-step plan to salvation. There is no self-help program that will deliver us from evil. In His great love for humanity God opened the way through Christ’s sacrifice and His resurrection for the dead to live, the fallen to rise, the blind to see, and the lost to be found.
May every one of us, descendants of Adam, the lost and the spiritually dead repent of our sins, turn from the world, and accept the glorious gift God offers us. Let’s embrace the life Christ has won for us.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Facebook, Twitter, Gab, or MeWe @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
August 10, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, life in Christ, redemption, Salvation
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We Can’t Do It On Our Own
There is something about us that makes us want to make everything about us. If there is any way to make it appear to anyone, everyone, or even just ourselves we will move any mountain, swim any sea, or rationalize any action to see ourselves as the center of the universe. And salvation falls into this same pattern.
For this reason, every religion man has ever devised has been built upon works. We must earn our way to heaven. That way we can take the credit.
I taught Comparative Religion for several colleges. During the semester as we covered the major and many minor religions of the world I would right on the board a section on each one. In these sections I wrote what it takes to receive salvation or make it to heaven in these different religions. At the end I asked the students to review all the sections and see if they could spot one striking similarity and one striking difference.
Inevitably at least one, often several, would discern that every religion except one required people to earn their salvation. And only one, Christianity, said salvation comes through faith alone.
Several times after this exercise students sought me out after class and accepted the Lord as their personal Savior. One time a woman brought in her whole family, and they all confessed Christ as Lord and professed their belief that God had raised Him from the dead.
We know there is a profound and life altering difference between a mental assent that Christ is Lord and a knowledge that God raised Him from the dead and a living faith in these two realities. The very faith we use to accept and profess is a gift from God. However, God gave us our intellect. He doesn’t mean for us to check our mind at the door when we enter His presence.
Learning the truth is a fundamental step towards accepting the truth.
The heart of the matter is a matter of the heart. Humanity does not need another teacher, a leader, or a new way of looking at life. The problem is that since the fall of Adam man has been spiritually dead. We are separated by an uncrossable gulf from God and each other. What we need is spiritual re-birth and reunification of fractured humanity.
Once we are re-created in Christ our feet are on the highway of holiness leading to life in, through, and with our Savior, but we aren’t merely passive passengers along for the ride. Because once we’re saved, we have work to do.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Gab, or MeWe @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Don’t Just Live Be Alive August 3, 2021
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, life in Christ, redemption, Salvation
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All of humanity have physical life while we spend our moment upon the stage of the world. Most have a soulish, or mental life whether we exercise it or not. But only those who have been born-again and united with Christ have spiritual life.
Try to imagine a human being who has no wisdom or understanding, no mental activity beyond what it takes to move, eat, and exist. This person might be in great shape, but their true humanity would be gone, and they would exist more as an animal than as a human.
This is how it is when we have not been born from above or re-born of the spirit. We may be in great shape, we may even be famous, or rich, handsome, beautiful, and acclaimed by all but we wouldn’t be a child of God. We would be dead in our spirit and separated from all that truly makes life worth living: union with our Creator.
Like casting pearls before swine trying to explain spiritual things to anyone who hasn’t been joined to the Body of Christ and received the Holy Spirit is like trying to hold the opposite ends of a magnet together, they repulse each other by their very nature.
Think for a moment of any funeral you’ve ever attended. There was grief present. There may have been tears. There might even have been stunned silence as the mourners contemplated the suddenness of death and the transitory nature of lie. One thing that is never there though is the one in the coffin taking any notice of any of this.
And that’s just how it is with the spiritually dead. The life of God’s Spirit is going on all around them. His Spirit is upholding and maintaining the integrity of all creation. His Spirit is alive and working in all the born-again Christians walking around them all day every day.
There is no more recognition of the passage, the work, or the presence of God’s Holy Spirit among the lost than there is recognition of all the life going on around a corpse in a casket. The spiritually dead read the Bible as it was just another book. They think of God as if He were a moral principle, the force, or a myth. They think of being born-again as something other people do, something that makes no sense, or else they don’t think about it all.
A person who is blind isn’t startled when you turn on a light. A person who is deaf doesn’t jump when you yell at them. It’s the same with those who are spiritually dead and living comfortably in sin, they couldn’t care less that God is holy and that He will not abide sin. They are neither frightened of the consequences of their sin nor are they enthralled with the rewards of salvation. They are blind. They are deaf. They are dead. When we speak of the deep things of God to these walking dead, we might as well be speaking to a brick wall. We are casting our pearls before swine. There is only one message we should seek to share with the lost: repent of your sins, accept Jesus as your Savior, and find life.
The whole meaning of the Gospel, the good news delivered to humanity through Jesus Christ, is seen in His resurrection.
Sin, death, and the devil are defeated when Jesus triumphed over them in the pit of hell disarming principalities and powers making a public spectacle of them as He led captivity captive. We must never forget that He was perfectly sinless and that He was delivered to the executioner for our transgressions and then He was raised for our justification.
Jesus didn’t come to die and then rise again to raise our awareness or further our education. He didn’t live a sinless life and then suffer for the sinful merely to provide us with a moral guide. God didn’t sacrifice His only Son to establish a cultural tradition. No, the passion of the Christ happened so that humanity may learn the truth about God’s love for us and His provision of a way to return to Him and become His children. This is the truth, and the truth has been revealed so that we may be free.
When someone has been missing for a certain length of time the authorities begin looking for them. If when they find them, they’re dead, after notifying their nearest family what else is there left to do except burry them. Because once we’re dead, we begin to decay rather quickly.
Preaching the Word without the anointing of the Holy Spirit is no more than searching for dead bodies. For without the Spirit there is no life. An old story says that once a man had a heart attack and died in a spiritually vacant church and it took the EMTs half an hour to figure out which one was the physically dead among all the spiritually dead.
Having scoured the highways and the byways for those willing to give up an hour on Sunday morning and pay their tithes these blind leaders of the blind can do no more with the breathing corpses than burry them in an upholstered pew. They preach a socially relevant something being careful to end the service in time to make it to the local buffet before all the other stained-glass graveyards get out.
It’s amazing but true, many who have never experienced the new birth will dispute with those of us who have what it is, how it operates, and what it does within us. Leave the laws, traditions, and ceremonies of the world behind and find the freedom that God wants you to have in Christ Jesus and don’t just live, be alive.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2021 Contact Dr. Owens drrobertowens@hotmail.com Follow Dr. Robert Owens on Parler, Facebook, Twitter, Gab, or MeWe @ Drrobertowens, or visit Dr. Owens’ Amazon Page / Edited by Dr. Rosalie Owens
Believe it Confess it Receive it Live it October 6, 2020
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Born-again, Dr. Robert Owens, In Him, Jesus saves, Righteousness, Salvation
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Here’s one of those fifty cent words we Christians throw around, Omniscient. In other words, God is all knowing. Since He’s the Alpha and the Omega the first and the last He knows the end from the beginning and everything in between.
All of which brings forward a question that’s a mystery often presented as a conundrum some people pose as a veiled attack against the reality of God.
They ask, “If God knows everything doesn’t that mean He knew Adam would fall even before He created him in the first place? So why do we make a big deal about God making a way for salvation when He created man to fail?” Some even compare this to the fireman who starts a fire then calls in the alarm so that he can become a hero for putting it out.
The biblical answer for this is found in Paul’s rendition of the story of Pharaoh hardening his heart against God found in Romans chapter nine:
For the Lord says of Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth.” Therefore, He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens.
You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?
What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory, even us whom He called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?
That’s it. “Does not the potter have power over the clay?” Remember what we were originally “God formed man of the dust of the ground. Adam was nothing but a clay mannequin until God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life.” It was only after this that “man became a living being.”
We are the clay. He is the potter. And the fact that He made one “for honor and another for dishonor” is none of our concern. It is the fact that He made a way for the dishonorable to become the honorable is what this is all about.
The first work of God for our salvation was His decision that He would make a way for us to become not only reconciled to Him but actually become His children. This is not based on anything we’ve done, will do, or could ever do. It is not because of any good which is in us. It is based solely on the love of God.
This truth gives us perfect security and assurance in our transitory world of sin. For the love of God never fails, never wavers, and is always everywhere dependable, reliable, and ever present. What can the world do to us when we’re safe and secure in the love of God?
Paul expressed this perfectly in his letter to the Romans, “For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Though all may be saved not all will be. All of us were born in sin. We carry embedded in our fallen bodies the burden of Adam’s original sin. Then along the way we all contribute to that sin burden ourselves. All these sins were paid for at the cross. All of us can have Adam’s sin as well as every sin we have ever or will ever commit washed away by the blood of Christ’s sacrifice however, not all will avail themselves of this glorious gift.
Look at it this way; if I purchase a brand-new car and I offer it to you. If you accept the gift it is your car. But if you refuse to accept it, it may have been purchased for you, it may be waiting right there in your driveway, but if you don’t accept the gift it isn’t yours.
From the first moment that we confess Christ as our Lord and believe that God raised Him from the dead we’ve walked in the kingdom of God. Our steps may still be visible in the natural world, but we’re walking in the Spirit. Before that, satan held the title deed to our lives. We were born into the line of the first Adam, sold in sin and separated from God. But, once we’re born-again we stand in the line of Christ, the last Adam.
God places us in His family, and He has work for us to do. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”
And since He has work for us to do, He has prepared us for that work. Every gift, every talent, every opportunity we have has been strategically placed in us and in our lives to help us fulfill the mission God has for us. He doesn’t send us on to the battle without equipping us for the fight. We aren’t some kind of busted up, raggedy sinner who just barely scraped in by the skin of our teeth. No! We’re the born-again children of God bought with the precious blood of Christ. In Him we are the righteousness of God.
We’re washed in the blood of the Lamb who takes away the sins of the world. Believe it. Confess it. Receive it. Live it. We not only stand blameless before God our Father we stand redeemed and holy in the love of Christ, children of God received before the throne not as one who lived a wasted life of sin, but instead as one set right, accepted, and honored as a member of the Body of Christ, a living stone in the temple of God.
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2020 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 Are Accepted September 28, 2020
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Born-again, Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, redemption, Salvation
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Everyone from the greatest sinner to the greatest saint needs the grace of God. Everyone who wanders through the vail of tears that is this fallen world is tested, tried, and assaulted by our adversary, the prince of the power of the air, who goes about like a roaring lion seeking who he may devour. Our fallen body and soul are open to him and his minions. And if that isn’t bad enough our own sinful desires lure us into trap after trap.
Surrounded and attacked by all this it seems natural that we would cry out with Paul, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
There is an answer to this cry. We don’t stand alone before the heavenly court of justice. If we did not even one of us would deserve anything except eternal damnation and separation from God. Instead of standing alone in the withering judgement fire “we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” and the fire of His presence becomes for us the life-giving warmth of His love.
We need to praise the glory of God’s grace, His unmerited favor because, “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” We may have been the worst of sinners. We may have cursed God and persecuted His people but once we turn from the darkness to the light, once we embrace Him and are born again all that changes. We change and the world around us changes.
Peter sums it up well when he says, “But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light; who once were not a people but are now the people of God, who had not obtained mercy but now have obtained mercy.”
The author of Hebrews goes into even greater detail showing how the eternal sacrifice of Christ is superior to the shadow sacrifices of the Old Covenant.
“Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 1And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance.”
This is the description of our present state. We are accepted. We have entered our inheritance. Today we “see in a mirror, dimly,” but once this perishable has been swallowed and replaced by imperishable, we shall see “face to face.” For “Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2020 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
All That Really Matters September 14, 2020
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Uncategorized.Tags: Born-again, Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, Salvation
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Back when I was an atheist and I believed this is all there is I was passionately interested in politics, economics, and current events. I was committed to working for my side and to defeating the other guy. Now that I’m a born-again child of God, a citizen of Heaven, and merely a pilgrim here I follow the ever-changing kaleidoscope of civic events more like a soap opera.
Yes, I understand that within this bubble we know as the space-time continuum the ins and outs of who’s up and who’s down actually make a difference. For example, it will have a profound impact on the United States whether we hand the government over to socialist revolutionaries or if we deliver it to capitalists. However, in the grand scheme of things this makes about as much difference as which queen bee is laying eggs in which hive.
I came to this level of a wokeness after years of Bible study, prayer, and fellowship with God. Just as a caterpillar goes through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly, I believe humans go through much the same process. Only instead of a two-stage process like a butterfly we go through three stages.
First, we’re a fetus (in Latin fetus means little one) for approximately nine months. Second, we’re born into this world and live here for as long as we do. And finally, we pass from this world into eternity. Let’s see: nine months, maybe 120 years, eternity. Which stage do you think is the real deal? The nine months prepare us for the 120 years and the 120 years prepare us for eternity. Two of these stages are merely steppingstones for the main event. Therefore, I contend that humans are in fact eternal beings who pass through two stages of development to become what we were created to be.
All that really matters in this stage of our development is the direction we’re facing when we leave it. Are we looking to God and putting our faith in Him? Or are we looking to the world still grasping for all it has to offer? Think of it this way: if when we’re a fetus inside our mother the umbilical cord is wrapped wrong or if there is a chromosomal problem we could enter life with some sort of handicap that we will spend the next 120 years dealing with. In the same way if we enter eternity facing in the wrong direction, we will spend eternity dealing with the ramifications of that choice.
From my personal Christian perspective here’s the 411 on how we turn from the world and face in the right direction.
Everyone can see that this world is broken. Evil runs rampant. The bad are rewarded. The good are crushed. Sickness, poverty, and oppression are on display in every direction. If God is good, why would He create such a horror show?
The easy answer is He didn’t. When He was done with creation He paused and looked around. Surveying all that He had done and it was “Good.”
Then man turned away from God, embraced Satan, and God cursed the world while at the same time promising that a Savior would come who would step on Satan’s head and deliver humanity from the grip of the evil we chose.
The price was a sinless sacrifice, the good for the bad. No human could do it because none of us has ever or could ever live a sinless life. Therefore, God sent His only Son, Jesus, to be incarnated as a human, live a sinless life, and then offer himself up as a sacrifice for us all. After His sacrifice Jesus descended into hell and as an eternal being suffered the punishment for every sin that had ever or would ever be committed. Then He was born-again in the very heart of darkness, triumphed over Satan, and God raised Him from the dead. Jesus led all those who had died waiting for this deliverance out of Satan’s grasp and emerged on the third day with the keys to death and hell.
After spending forty days instructing His disciples on how to carry the message of the best news ever to the world He ascended into heaven. Ten days later the Holy Spirit arrived and filled the new believers so that from then on they were no longer earth bound humans. They were instead wall-to-wall God birthed children of the Most High on a pilgrimage here with a mission to share their experience to be witnesses.
There it is in a nutshell. The word Gospel means “Good News” in old English. So, when you get filled to overflowing with all the bad news the world vomits up every day why not turn to the good news.
Don’t worry about what you can’t do anything about. Do you think if you missed one news broadcast or if you stopped watching them for ever it would make any difference to what is happening on the stage of the world or would the actors just keep reading their lines and playing their parts? The bad news impacts us more than we can ever impact it.
It’s like a joke making the rounds:
An English asks an Amish fellow, “Why isn’t the COVID rampaging through your communities?” The Amish fellow says without hesitation, “Because we don’t have any TVs.”
The TVs, radios, magazines, and papers may carry the news, but only the Bible has the Good News. It all comes down to choices: “choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” In other words no matter what, we’re all going to serve somebody. It will either be any one of the countless gods of this world or the one true God.
How do you make that choice? Is it by joining the right church? Is it by attending the correct services, worshipping in a certain way, or following any of the endless rules the world invents to complicate and build a barrier between us and the God who wants us to join His family? No! Not only has He made it simple He has made it easy. All we need to do is confess Jesus as the Lord of our life and believe in our hearts that God has raised Him from the dead and we will be saved. That’s it. Do that and we have joined God’s family. Then we can pour ourselves into His Word so that it’s life-giving Spirit will fill us and recreate us.
Forget about the bad news and study the Good News instead. Let’s “Eliminate the negative, accentuate the positive, latch on to the affirmative, and don’t with mess mister in between.”
Or to put it another way, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus, look full in His wonderful face, and the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of His glory and grace.”
Dr. Owens teaches History, Political Science, Global Studies, and Religion. He is the Historian of the Future @ http://drrobertowens.com © 2020 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
A New You for a New Year January 8, 2020
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Religion, Uncategorized.Tags: born again, Dr. Robert Owens, Faith, Hope, Jesus, Jesus saves, love, Salvation, the Gospel
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Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired? Are you facing a new year and thinking, “Why?” Have you ever looked at your life and thought, “I wish I could start this all over again”? When we come to the end of ourselves, we have the chance to find the beginning of everything else.
Every person is the center of their own universe simply because that’s the only vantage point available to anyone who has ever lived. Usually by the time we’re old enough to know anything we’ve figured out that just because we’re the center of observable reality that reality doesn’t revolve around us. And it doesn’t take long to realize that the cold machinery of the space-time continuum takes as little heed to us as we do to the microbes in the ground we walk over every day.
The cold impersonal avalanche of happenstance leads any thinking person to the question, “What’s it all about?” The inscrutability of the carnival mirror maze we perceive as reality leads many to conclude there is no meaning, there is no point, and there is no reason. All there is is what it is and that’s all that there is. A sort of Popeye philosophy that leaves us constantly wandering about looking for the magic can of spinach that’ll make us strong enough to break through the mirrors to scan an open horizon with a clear vista. On our own it always seems to be just around the next corner.
This is where revelation comes in. A mouse in a maze never sees the whole picture. It only sees the corridor it happens to be in at the time. And though it searches and searches it always seems like someone has moved the cheese. Only through revelation can we see enough of the puzzle to learn which piece needs to go next to which piece to make the picture whole.
Lucky for us there is a God who created all this and He wants to allow us to see behind the curtain of the physical giving us a glimpse of the spiritual, which is the essence of it all.
I’m a Christian. By that I mean I have confessed Jesus Christ as my personal Lord, and I believe in my heart that God has raised Him from the dead. Because of that I believe I am saved, I am born-again, and I have a free pass out of hell and into heaven. And on a daily basis I do my best to follow Christ: loving and forgiving myself and the world around me. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
This wasn’t always the case. Until I was thirty years old I was an unapologetic reprobate, and an atheist who cursed a God I proudly declared I didn’t believe in. Then I had a personal encounter with Christ which led me to study the Bible, which led to my confession of Jesus Christ as Lord and my unswerving belief that God has raised Him from the dead. Through this I was born again receiving a brand-new life here and now and that afore mentioned free pass out of hell and into heaven.
I immediately transitioned from hopelessness to hopefulness, from despair to joy, from dread to expectancy. This is such a good deal I can’t bear to keep it to myself.
My words and my testimony will not get you anything. They can’t give you a new you. Only God’s Spirit can do that. We can’t think our way to God. It’s only through His revelation that we can get beyond the example of a blind man trying to picture an elephant by touching its trunk or tail. The only way I have found to find God is through His word. Think about it. If God only wrote one book out of all the billions of books in the world doesn’t it seem logical that it would be the most important thing we could possibly read? If we deny that His word is His word we close the door and throw away the key.
You might say, “Why do I need to be born again?
Here are some reasons and their biblical support:
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Those who think they can do it on their own end up obsessed with measuring their own moral muscle but never get around to exercising it in real life. Those who trust God’s action in them find that God’s Spirit is in them—living and breathing God! Obsession with self in these matters is a dead end; attention to God leads us out into the open, into a spacious, free life. Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God, ends up thinking more about self than God. That person ignores who God is and what he is doing. And God isn’t pleased at being ignored.
Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted; anyone who refuses to trust him has long since been under the death sentence without knowing it. And why? Because of that person’s failure to believe in the one-of-a-kind Son of God when introduced to him.
That is why whoever accepts and trusts the Son gets in on everything: life complete and forever! And that is also why the person who avoids and distrusts the Son is in the dark and doesn’t see life. All he experiences of God is darkness, and an angry darkness at that.
In which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience,
Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire, and if anyone’s name is not found in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
Jesus Christ is always there for us. He’ll answer us anytime we call him. He stands at the door of our heart and knocks. Open the door today and He’ll come in.
As a new year begins, we can all begin a new life. The mistakes of our past don’t have to be the blueprint of our future.
One of the most important truths in Christianity is that God loves us so much that He sought us out before we even start trying to find him. Referring to Himself in a title reserved for the Messiah Jesus said, “the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” He also said, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.”
Since He chose us, all we must do is choose Him and that new life starts right now. That is the Way. I have shared what the Bible says we must do to be saved; confess and believe. But it isn’t about a formula. Being a follower of Christ is much more than that. It’s following Christ. He said “Whoever desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.” because as He also said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” Christ doesn’t show us the way. He is the Way to a new you for a new year … or any year … any time.
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
Is Thanksgiving All About Receiving? November 27, 2019
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Religion, Uncategorized.Tags: Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus lives, Jesus saves, Thanksgiving, to give is better
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In millions of homes throughout America families and friends join to together to celebrate a cherished holiday, Thanksgiving. In countless homes people go through various types of rituals and traditions including taking time to share what they’re thankful for. If we listen to those often hastily prepared statements we’ll find the vast majority of them refer to what’s been received.
“I’m thankful for my family.” “I’m thankful for health.” “I’m thankful for peace, prosperity, safety, security, a home, a car, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, etc.”
It’s good to give thanks for all we’ve receive. It’s even better to give thanks for the Giver and to recognize that it’s all a gift.
The greatest gift of all is Jesus. God gave Him to us as our Savior. It’s through His stripes we’re healed. It’s through Him making Himself poor that we became rich. And it’s through the indwelling Spirit of God that we have access into the wisdom of the ages. And that wisdom teaches us that it’s better to give than receive.
So this Thanksgiving as we share what we’re thankful for perhaps we should be thankful for all the opportunities we have to give. The Word of God tells us plainly, “If you grasp and cling to life on your terms, you’ll lose it, but if you let that life go, you’ll get life on God’s terms.” In another place it says, “Give away your life; you’ll find life given back, but not merely given back—given back with bonus and blessing. Giving, not getting, is the way.”
All around us a world in need of God stumbles through the inky void of uncertainty not knowing why bad things happen to good people, why the evil seem to triumph over the good, or where they’re going when they die. And we have the answer. His name is Jesus.
So how do we share what isn’t just good news but the best news ever with the lost and broken around us?
It isn’t by trying to shove a Bible down their throat. It isn’t by beating them up with doctrines they don’t know repeated in religious speak. It isn’t by trying to scare them to death with stories of what will happen when they die. When we use these time-tested mistakes while trying to share the most beautiful truth in the world, that Jesus came to bring us life, our success rate is perfectly expressed by my favorite band, Casting Crowns, “Jesus, friend of sinners, the truth’s become so hard to see. The world is on their way to You, but they’re tripping over me.”
It’s not about who we are it’s about who He is. It isn’t about what we’ve done it’s about what He did. And it isn’t about what we get it’s about what we give.
I wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving! May the Lord bless you and keep you may He make His face shine upon you. As we gather with our loved ones on a day set aside for giving thanks instead of offering a litany of what we’ve received let’s give thanks for opportunities to give.
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
Lead Me Not Into Temptation August 8, 2019
Posted by Dr. Robert Owens in Religion, Uncategorized.Tags: defeat sin, Dr. Robert Owens, Jesus saves, resist temptation, Salvation, the Gospel
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This line from the model prayer Jesus taught us something the Apostle James also points out, “Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am tempted by God;’ for God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does He Himself tempt anyone. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed.” Or, as it says in the Message, “Don’t let anyone under pressure to give in to evil say, ‘God is trying to trip me up.’ God is impervious to evil, and puts evil in no one’s way. The temptation to give in to evil comes from us and only us. We have no one to blame but the leering, seducing flare-up of our own lust.”
It’s us and only us who choose to sin, to turn our backs on the good and embrace evil. “Lust gets pregnant, and has a baby: sin! Sin grows up to adulthood, and becomes a real killer.”
Just like everyone else who’s wandered this earth since the fall of man I struggle with temptation. It matters little that I know these struggles come from my own lust. I still have a battle on my hands. And just like everyone else I can stand strong against most temptations but I do have those sins which so easily ensnare me in their web of momentary pleasure and future guilt. These are the things I struggle with. Anyone who’s honest with themselves will admit they have the same situation.
Recently after a service I had a man asked for counsel about this very thing. All I could do is all I can ever do; share my witness.
When I’m faced with the temptation to fall into my pet sins, which I face on a daily basis, I admit I’m not strong enough to resist the temptation. These sins have years, decades even of practice in enticing me to wander from God’s path of obedience. My own lusts have their spiritual hands on all the right levers to pull me away. How can I resist? Who’ll save me from myself?
Christ has come to set us free and when He sets us free we’re free indeed. I know that’s what the word says. But how do I get in on all this freedom when I’ve spent so much of my life as a willing slave to these sins?
The first step is to admit my inability to resist the sin. And to realize that these thorns in my flesh are there to protect me from pride and to shape me into what the Lord intends me to be. It’s the act of surrender, of admitting my inability to resist that makes a way. You see when I get to the end of my rope if I give up my struggle and ask Jesus to use His strength to resist the temptation for me I can walk unscathed through the fires of my lust. When I’m weak then I’m strong because Christ’s strength is perfected in weakness.
We’ll never be tempted by more than we can endure and in every temptation there’s a way of escape. This is one of the many promises we can hang on to when we face our pet sins across the gulf of temptation. Think of how the Lord himself resisted temptation in the wilderness. He used the Word of God to rebuke Satan.
In the same way we need to have the Word of God in us if we want to have the strength to admit our weakness so we can find His strength.
Walking with God can sound and feel like walking backwards to anyone steeped in the wisdom of the world. For the wisdom of God is foolishness to the wise of this world. Just as the weakness of a sinner becomes the strength of the saint as hand in hand with the Man who stilled the sea we give it all to Jesus so He can give it back to us.
Those who seek to keep their lives lose them and those who give their lives away keep them for all eternity.
So how do we resist temptation? We trust Jesus to do it for us since every sin was paid for at the cross. Accept Him as your Lord and Savior. Believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead. And you will be saved. That isn’t pie in the sky. That isn’t a hollow promise for the great by-an-by. That is a constant reality for the here and now.
So when those pesky old sins reach up and try to drag us down remember we aren’t out here all alone. Once we’ve given ourselves to God in and through Jesus it’s no longer just us facing these struggles it’s Christ within us the hope of Glory.
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
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
Dr. Robert Owens Chronicles the History of the Future 