Danger! The Church of Oprah: Precepts Without Power

One morning not long ago we headed through downtown Branson and our vehicle just stopped running. Everything was completely dead! I tried for several minutes to figure out what was wrong but nothing worked. I finally called a nearby service station and related my problem to the attendant. He went back to speak with the manager, who was under a car on the grease rack. The attendant came back with this helpful offer, "Sure, we can take care of it. Bring it on in!"
Now isn't that the trouble with a lot of religion? You get instructions, but you don't get power.
You get some good advice, but you don't get the strength to carry it out.
Kind of like the "Church of Oprah." (Here is info on Oprah's new church http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JW4LLwkgmqA . Let me tell you something...
Good advice, without power is bad news!
Oprah might think that all of this new stuff or "new age" is new but it is as old as satan.
The Old Testament law was impossible to live by. That is what the sacrifices were for. The law tells you what you should do and should not do, but it doesn't give you the power to perform.
Even the Sermon on the Mount is, by itself, Bad News!
Have you read it recently? Have you tried to do what Jesus says we're supposed to do? If that were all of the religion that Jesus had to offer, it would surely be bad news. Its precepts are beautiful, Its ideals are noble , and its metaphors are magnificent. But Good News? Hardly!
Who in the world can live by it?
And that's not all the disciples heard. They saw Jesus cure people who were sick. he brought at least two dead men back to life. He restored the sight to the blind. He put lame folks back on their feet. Then He turned to his disciples and said, "Go and do even greater things than these."
Good News?
Why He might as well have told them to fly to the moon!
But Jesus knew that His disciples needed more than precepts, more than instruction. They also needed Power.
Because of that I believe Acts 1:8 is one of the greatest verses in the Bible.
"You shall receive power, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you and you shall be My witnesses!
Now, THAT MAKES A DIFFERENCE!
Precepts plus power is Good News!
The Cross is Good News about God's Love!
The Resurrection is Good News about the power of God!
The Good News is that there is Power available to . . .Love like God loves. . . .To Live like Christ lived. Has that happened in your life? Have you discovered the power of the Holy Spirit who lives in you through faith in Jesus Christ?
It was precepts plus power that made the early disciples effective in their living and in their service. Ever since I can remember people have been trying to tell how to live with no power to live it.
Oprah has NO POWER!
Open your heart to the Holy Spirit today!

Family

Grandkids

Helga and the Christian Way

The Christian way is different: harder, and easier. Christ says, "Give me all! I don’t want so much of your time and so much of your money and so much of your work: I want you.... Hand over the whole natural self, all the desires which you think innocent as well as the ones you think wicked—the whole outfit. I will give you a new self instead. In fact, I will give you Myself: my own will shall become yours." Both harder and easier than what we are all trying to do.

- C.S Lewis "Mere Christianity"

Have you ever been lost? Maybe in an unfamiliar place and you can't get back on track. We recently got a GPS for our laptop that tells us where we are to turn and how far to go. Now this Lady's voice--isn't that great guys? A lady is telling us which direction to go--told us which way to turn in Louisville, Kentucky and we missed it! Well we weren't prepared. We just plugged the thing in and tried to figure out how to run it while we were driving. We missed the turn. "Off track, Off track, Recalculating!" she blared as I asked my wife, who was manning the laptop, "Which way! Were we supposed to turn right or left?" "I don't know and quit yelling, she said! I can't figure this thing out!" Needless to say after trying to find our way back through the different freeways in Louisville we drove way out of our way and put us two full hours behind our schedule. We also had several arguments......no just loud discussions about where to turn and all the time our lady in the computer was saying very forcefully, "OFF TRACK, OFF TRACK, RECALCULATING!" I found myself arguing with two women about which direction to go and that wasn't even funny. But fastrack forward a week... as we were leaving my daughters house we made a pact. Before we start a trip we will plug all the information into the laptop correctly. We did that and heading across Illinois my wife's son called with an emergency from Southeast Missouri State, where he is a freshman. He needed his mother! Jo, my wife, plugged in the new information and we headed south across Illinois on unfamiliar roads. Helga, as we named her, kept telling us where to turn and we watched our blip on the screen follow the road on the map, bumping across railroad tracks just as we saw them on the map. Taking us across rivers as we watched the blip cross a blue line. Wow, now it seemed so easy! All of a sudden we were told to turn at a dark exit with no markings and head across a state road into the night. It was almost midnight and for the next 45 minutes Helga took us through little towns in almost complete darkness and state roads that were narrower than our driveway. It was a little scary because we were traveling blindly. But Helga faithfully told us to, "turn right on county road 24!" When we received the instruction for our next turn we both turned and looked at each other with our mouths open. "Turn right at next unnamed road" "What?" "Turn right at next unnamed road." That can't be right, can it? But there in the middle of the night with no house for at least 15 miles and no lights that we could see on any horizon, was a road. Just like Helga said! "Shall we turn" Jo asked. "I don't know! Maybe we should go back." "I'm not sure I can find my way back." So we turned and in just a couple of miles the unnamed road became a dirt unnamed road. Then under an overhang of trees Helga left us. Out there in the middle of nowhere not very far from the Mississippi River we lost our guide. For two miles we kept going hoping for something and there she was again. "Turn left on state hwy 48. Approaching in 3 minutes." I never was so glad to hear her voice. We turned and in another mile we were suddenly back on a main hwy within eyesight of a beautiful bridge that took us right into Cape Girardeau, MO where we were headed. C.S. Lewis tells us that the Christian way is like that: Different, Harder, Easier! It certainly is different giving up ourselves to Him. And it is harder than anything we have ever done to give ourselves wholly to Him. But when we do it, life is so much easier. "Love Song," one of my favorite Christian rock groups from my days in college had a song that I loved. It is called

"Front Seat, Back Seat"
"I was runnin' from my Master and I tried out every new thing I could find.
And my life turned into one disaster. Without the Lord I almost lose my
mind.
I was sitting in the front seat trying really hard to be the driver.
Thinking I was making real good time but always winding up the late arriver.
Now I've been trying out the back seat
and I find it is the very place
to be.
Now I'm trying out the back seat and I'm leaving all the driving to
the Chief!"

Sometimes when we are trying too hard to live the Christian life, we can't figure out the "Word of God and we miss our turns and then can't seem to get back to the right place. Just close your eyes and listen again.

With Christ our lives are "different, harder, and when we are wholly His...Easier. -Galatians 5

"Who was that Masked Man!"

Wow another blog this week. It must be a record for me. We have three days off in a row so here I am. My wife Jocille has been reading my Daughters blog, and my son's blog to me the past few days and laughing and laughing at Pastor Pink's blog as she read his to me.
So I thought I better get serious about this. When you have a few days to sit and not much mony to spend, God is right there and speaks louder than usual. Allright, Allright, I know I am just listening better. One thing I listened to and watched when I was a kid was....(I am not wholly comfortable admitting this) Yes! I will confess that in my earlier days I was an unabashed fan of the Lone Ranger.
Every time he was on the black and white tv we had I would tune in to watch the exploits of the Lone Ranger. For "nowhere in those sterling pages of yesteryear can one find a greater champion of justice."
That's the way the program used to start. "We turn again to those thrilling days when out of the past came the thundering hoof beats of the great horse, Silver, for the Lone Ranger rides again."
Every week, the program started with those words.
But what I could never understand about every episode was that at the conclusion, 27 minutes and thirty seconds into the episode, somebody would always ask the question: "Who was that man?"
Someone else would always say, "Why didn't you know? He's the Lone Ranger!"
That is the way it used to end.
Now as a young kid it perplexed me that here was someone whose life had been saved, whose money had been restored, whose ranch and been protected ~~their whole lives had hung in the balance~~ and yet all the way to the end they didn't have the slightest idea who that man was. Why hadn't they asked at the beginning of the program instead of the end?
They would allow him to do all of this good stuff for them without ever knowing who he was.

It occurs to me that an awful lot of people in the world today react the same way to Jesus Christ and what He has done. It will be a tragic thing, the Bible says, when Christ comes again, .....for those who allowed Him to work in their lives but never really got to know Him.
At the end of the Lone Ranger when the question was asked it was too late for them. He was gone.
Don't let it be too late for you! Get to know Jesus Christ today!
-Sheldon Tucker

What? or Who? Are you listening to?

Do you ever stop to listen to what your listening to?

What do you listen to as you go about your daily life? Of course we have the radio in the car or maybe the TV in the background as you make breakfast...of course it could be the computer that you sit at for much of your day....or maybe you are really connected and you listen to your phone or PDA for email and "updates."

Whatever you listen to, has a way of shaping who you are because what you listen to is based on Who you listen to.

An old gospel song says, "Deep within you there's a voice of the darkness and voice of the light and just by listening you've made your decision because the voice you hear is going to win the fight."

I grew up in Southern Idaho where there are many Basque Sheepherders, and I remember hearing one who was interviewed on the radio. The reporter noticed, as he spent time with this sheepherder that his two dogs were always fighting. And so he asked the shepherd, "Which of your dogs usually wins?" To which the man replied, "The one I feeds the most!"
And you know it's true! It's true in every aspect of our lives and especially true in our spiritual lives!
The apostle Paul tells us in his letter to the Galatians that the spirit we listen to is the one that is going to win. Who is winning the fight in your life today? and more importantly...Who are you listening too?