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Birdwell Lane Church of Christ Big Spring, TX |
Weekly Thoughts - December 2006
| <---- November 2006 | -- | January 2007 ----> |
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03 - "AND NOW TO MEDDLE" 10 - "I SAW WHISKEY IN ACTION" 17 - "THE CHURCH OF CHRIST AND ERROR" 24 - "I WISH YOU ENOUGH" 31 - NO ARTICLE |
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"AND NOW TO MEDDLE" Now I want to meddle a moment. I wonder what we are teaching our kids when school, activities, hobbies, and just about anything becomes a priority in life? Understand that I am very pro education, sports, hobbies, etc. Each has its place. But when these things are put above the relationship we want them to have with Jesus, we have misguided them. We teach them how to work, but do we teach them how to worship? We make them skip things to get their homework done, but do we make them skip homework to develop relationships with God and His people? In our family church or church activities were never used as a punishment. (If you don't get this done you can't go with the youth group.) The message we tried to convey is that being with God's people is who we are. So when the church meets Sunday morning, we will be there for class and worship. When we meet together Wednesday evening, we are there. Sometimes extra pressure was put on our kids to finish a report for school that could have been done earlier, or study for a big test, but being with God's people was still the priority; school came second. Were there times when our Kids didn't want to go to church because they thought it was boring? Sure. But doing boring is a state of mind and we tried to recast their thinking so that this was not a continual argument. (They felt the same way about school, but we made them go anyway.) There was little room for compromise on what we understood to be best for our kids with regards to being with God's family. If we want our kids to be in the Lord they must see that it is a priority with us. If we want them to stay in the Lord, they must develop a relationship with the Lord and the Lord's people, the church, will be an important part of this. Parents, bring your kids to Bible class. Look these verses up when you have a chance as they show God's desire from His people of old as well as us today: Deuteronomy 6; Ephesians 6:1-6; Hebrews 3:13; 10:24-25. Parents, now I challenge you to start fresh with a determination to place the bringing up your children in the Lord as first priority. See ya Sunday, Ralph |
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"I SAW WHISKEY IN ACTION" It was the holiday season of 1980 in Aztec, New Mexico. The weather was bad and the highways were slick with ice when we were called out on an emergency ambulance run. The scene upon our arrival was one which will never leave my mind. I saw a baby…its tender white skin bruised and bloody, its golden curls matted with dirt and blood…one tiny jaw crushed to a pulp. A wee hand hanging limp…just a ball of flesh with broken bones protruding against a pair of pink rompers soiled with great blotches of muddy blood. White-robed hospital attendants picked up the little mangled form and gently placed it on a stretcher. It quivered and a low moan of anguish came from those baby lips once perfectly shaped and now bruised and disfigured. Again they lifted a form from the ground…a sort of huddled, shapeless bundle. It was the baby's mother, broken, mangled, crumbled, with no sign of life. The card on the bosom read "morgue." Many feet away lay the father, still alive and screaming with pain. His face was cut by windshield glass while one eye was completely out of socket and hanging by a string. His legs were a shapeless mass, and blood was gushing from his mouth. He stopped screaming and called out in agony, "My wife! My children!" Then he fell back into merciful unconsciousness. In the crowd of people, held back by kindly hands, a small boy sobbed and cried, "Daddy! Daddy! Mother!" Two state policemen held between them a wobbly, drunken wretch, reeking with fumes. "What happened?" he blubbered. "Only had a couple of drinks." Sirens screamed and the crowd made way to the hospital and morgue. Policemen placed the four year old, hysterical boy in a car and drove off with him still plaintively calling for his parents. A wrecking car crew with a huge crane began preparation for the removal of two badly smashed automobiles. On the pavement lay bits of broken glass, a broken whiskey bottle and lottery tickets, and here and there a pool of blood. A child was an orphan. Three graves were dug. A drunken driver would receive a light fine; liquor stores would continue to sell their hellish brew. And voters would continue to vote to license the business that is staining the highways with innocent blood… blood shed by fiendish, drunken drivers. The devil smiled, he had won again. He had convinced the tavern owner, the salesman and the drunk that the brew was harmless. It was only a social drink. Why, what could happen? See ya Sunday, Ralph |
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"THE CHURCH OF CHRIST AND ERROR" God gave Ben-hadad into the hands of Ahab, king of Israel, to be mercilessly slain. But Ahab SPARED Ben-hadad because the latter called him "brother" and offered him a share in his pilfered estates. This is identically the means by which "organized religion" enticed and won over to its platform the people who introduced "instrumental music" into the church of Christ. It was BROTHERLY in its bid for co-operation. It offered the honor (?) of rating those folk as a "sister-denomination," all of which stand condemned in the Word of God. Ahab was easily inveigled into accepting Ben-hadad's "brotherly" proposal, and this is what cost him. "Thus saith Jehovah, Because you have let go out of your hand the man whom I had devoted to destruction, therefore your life shall go for his life, and your people for his people" (2 Kings 20:34,32). Precisely that very punishment has come upon those people because when its fathers had the denominations in their power (in the early days of the restoration), they refused to continue to slay them with the SWORD but made a LEAGUE with them and UNITED forces with them to corrupt the truth; and now the brethren who introduced the "instruments of music" has given its life for the prosperity and upbuilding of denominationalism, and has virtually lost its individuality, being absorbed into the denominational system as a VASSAL thereto. Well, Ahab has died that Ben-hadad might live to harass the kingdom of God. Brethren, let us who have not "bowed the knee to Baal" intensely "preach the Word." As organized religions are delivered into our hands (and they shall continue to be), let us in kindness, but firmness, demolish their citadel and take their usurped territory for Christ the Lord; and let us not pity their institutions, but overthrow them, and so "by all means save some." They are now, even as their Phariseean and Sadduceean prototypes were of old, the enemies of Christ our Lord, and no healthy progress can be made by His church until it recognizes this truth and until we enthusiastically and persistently unsheathe the SWORD against them. Pity for them is unlawful and disastrous. We STAGNATE when we are at peace with ERROR. This stagnation is apparent in the existence of CLIQUES and HOBBIES among us; each making itself a TEST OF FELLOWSHIP. These inside FACTIONS are a CURSE among us. Due to our LACK of aggression against our common and chief foe - organized religion in the sectarian field. If we are not careful, we shall walk straight into perdition ourselves through compromise. The Pharisees and Sadducees of Christ's day were His chief and ONLY FOE, for it was RELIGION that demanded and secured His death. Today the cause of Christ suffers ONLY FROM "organized religion" in its various forms. See ya Sunday, Ralph |
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"I WISH YOU ENOUGH" 2 Thessalonians 1:2 2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. The tree is decorated, packages are wrapped, parties are over, and the kids are soon to be here. Dinner planned, groceries bought, house cleaned and exhaustion has set in. The holiday is here. What a wonderful time of the year. Spirits are generally high, attitudes good and the spirit of giving is seen almost every where. "Zeke", Mary Ann and I want to take time in this bulletin to say "THANK YOU" for allowing us the honor of serving you here at Birdwell Lane. We wish all of you a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year. Thanks for being near and dear. Your words of encouragement, calls, cards, cookies and such have meant so much to us throughout the year. You have become not just the congregation where we serve but a part of each one of us. As this holiday season takes off at full speed our thoughts for each of you can be summed up like this: If all I wish could be; Of all the great wishes in a Wonderful world, I'd only wish for three. And if I could have three wishes, And if my first wish came true, There'd be peace on earth good Will among men, And love in all that we do. Luke 2:14 14 "Glory to God in the highest, And on earth peace, goodwill toward men!" See ya Sunday, Ralph |
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