Truth Is Not Relative

Teaching an adult Sunday school class is one of my passions.

One of my goals is to challenge my students with material that requires them to think.

You see, God not only wants our hearts, he wants our minds as well.

Matthew 22:37-38 (NET) - Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment.

Teaching requires a great deal of learning on my part as well.

Most will define learning as the acquisition of new knowledge.

But, there is more to it than that.

It also means being willing to unlearn some things along the way.

The worlds of art, music and literature have ways of shaping our way of thinking.

A number of things we hold to be true as Christians have been shaped by these as well.

Even things that do not necessarily stand up to the test of Scripture.

One of the men I admire from history is Jan Hus who was martyred in 1415.

Hus said, “Therefore faithful Christian, seek the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, adhere to truth and defend truth to the death.”

Hus understood that real truth was of God and therefore needed to be treated as such.

Hus continually sought the truth throughout his life.

He understood that “truth prevails.”

Or, at least it should.

I find it more than a bit disturbing that in today’s world, truth has been marginalized.

We have even found ways of making truth a relative concept.

We might, for example, say that what is true for one individual might not be true for another.

I wonder what Hus would have to say about that?

Hus knew that contradictory statements could not possibly both be the truth.

Hus even said that if shown a better truth, he would relinquish the one he held in favor of the superior.

Hus lived in constant search of the truth.

He was even willing to die defending it.

In today’s world, we tend to treat the truth lightly.

This is most unfortunate.

John 14:6 (NET) - Jesus replied, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

John 8:31-32 (NET) - Then Jesus said to those Judeans who had believed him, “If you continue to follow my teaching, you are really my disciples and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

We do others a disservice when we allow the truth to be marginalized.

As Christians we have a moral obligation to defend the truth.

Of course, this will mean disagreeing with others from time to time.

That is fine as long as we remember we must love everyone including those with whom we disagree.

That means disagreeing without becoming disagreeable ourselves.

It means loving those who may choose not to love us in return… and that’s the truth.

Matthew 22:39-40 (NET) - The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.”

Blessings,

Jim Pokorny

The Other Brother Jim

Look for me at http://faithfulfeetteam.blogspot.com/ on Friday, October 19, 2018.

I will be back here on Friday, October 26, 2018

As Good as His Word

Isaiah 40:8 (NET) - The grass dries up, the flowers wither, but the decree of our God is forever reliable.

English is not my first language.

My first language happens to be Czech because that is what my parents spoke at home.

They also tended to speak it with family and old friends.

In public, however, they spoke English so they made certain I learned that as well.

My grandparents, however, spoke Czech almost exclusively.

As I was growing up, my grandmother would send me a card on every special occasion.

The card may have been printed in English, but the sentiment my grandmother wrote was always written in Czech.

Although I could speak Czech fairly well, the written language was another matter.

I would always have to have Mom or Dad read it to me.

As the years went by, I wanted to be able to read my grandmother’s words for myself.

I asked my father to buy me a textbook on the Czech language which I studied.

Eventually I learned enough to grasp the written language.

Then I was able to read my grandmother’s words for myself.

It was one thing for Mom or Dad to tell me that my grandmother loved me.

It was another thing for me to be able to read this in her own words.

In a way, the Bible reminds me a little bit of those cards from my grandmother.

Parents, pastors, Sunday school teachers, friends and others can tell us Jesus loves us.

Through the Bible we are able to read this for ourselves.

One of the first hymns we are taught as children is Jesus Loves Me.

As adults, we still think of it as a song for children.

That is because its message is so simple.

Jesus loves me, this I know

For the Bible tells me so.

We may think that the song is for children, but it can be an excellent reminder in our adult years as well.

Matthew 24:35 (NET) - Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.

Blessings,

Jim Pokorny

The Other Brother Jim

Look for me at http://faithfulfeetteam.blogspot.com/ on Friday, October 6, 2017.

I will be back here on Friday, October 13, 2017

Old Car Seats

I am likely revealing my age with this piece, but that’s okay.

When I was very young the seats in my parents’ car and other cars were more like benches.

Seat belts were not yet standard equipment.

Child seats had not appeared on the scene either.

It’s a wonder people my age managed to survive childhood, but survive we did.

I remember sitting in the front seat with my parents.

My father drove and was seated to my left.

Mother sat on the passenger side and was seated to my right,

I was not even big enough to see out the windshield.

My view was confined to my parents and the dashboard.

There is one other thing I do recall with great clarity,

Whenever my father would have to brake suddenly to avoid an accident there was one thing I could always count on,

My father’s right arm would immediately shoot out and go across my chest.

At the same instant, my mother’s left arm would shoot out and go across my waist.

This was a perfectly orchestrated maneuver on their part.

It happened without a single word being said between them.

It was automatic.

With their combined strength, they kept me from moving much like seatbelts do today,

Working together, they kept me safe.

In time, I realized that this was just one way in which they demonstrated their love for me.

When I was a bit older, I moved from the front seat of the car to the back seat.

Having grown I was also able to see more of the world outside the car.

One thing I noticed was that very young couples in other vehicles tended to sit right next to each other.

Slightly older couples gave each other a little more space.

Old couples (from the vantage point of a child) tended to sit far apart,

I imagine that there was a time when my own parents sat right next to each other in the car.

When I came along, they made room for me,

Even when I was old enough to sit in the back seat, my parents kept on sitting where they did before.

I was thinking about those old car seats and how parallels can be drawn to our relationship with God.

First, when I was quite young and danger threatened me in the car, my parents tried to protect me as best they could.

They wanted to make sure they did their utmost for me even if it meant a big sacrifice on their part.

God made a huge sacrifice for us when He gave His Son for us.

John 3:16 (NET) -- For this is the way God loved the world: He gave His one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life.

Second, I remembered that when couples first fell in love, it seemed they could not get close enough.

In time, space grew between them.

When we first come to know God, our love is such that we want to get as close to Him as we can.

Perhaps, over time, we may notice that we don’t seem as close as we once were.

One of us has moved,

Care to guess which one of us that was?

Psalm 136:26 (NET) - Give thanks to the God of heaven, for his loyal love endures!

Blessings,

Jim Pokorny

The Other Brother Jim

Look for me at http://faithfulfeetteam.blogspot.com/ on Friday, July 21, 2017.

I will be back here on Friday, July 28, 2017

A Family Resemblance

It still amazes me when someone I do not know walks up to me, mentions my father by name and then asks if I am his son.

A short time before Christmas I ran into an old friend who told me that he had come across an old photograph I might be interested in.

It was my good fortune to see this gentleman again just a week later.

He handed me an envelope containing the photograph he told me about previously.

I thanked him and then opened the envelope.

The photograph was very special to me.

It was taken during the 1950's when my father and one of his brothers both worked at a restaurant.

My father looked extremely young.

My father was about half my current age and his brother a few years older.

Also in the picture was the owner and some of his other employees.

That photograph has occupied my thoughts a great deal since.

I have shown this photograph to a number of people and there are some things people have been kind enough to point out.

They point out that there is a family resemblance between my father and his brother which is not surprising.

Some even say that my father and I share a resemblance.

I find this most interesting because I wear glasses, have had a beard for decades and have a large frame whereas my father was clean shaven, had no need for glasses and was a very trim gentleman.

Even though there are physical differences between us people can still see my father's characteristics in me.

Although he's been gone for a very long time and there are major differences in our appearance, I still encounter people who look at me and ask if he was my father.

Somehow, they can see past all the differences and still see a bit of my father in me.

This puts me in mind of the old hymn “They'll Know We are Christians by Our Love”.

Jesus put it this way.

John 13:35 (NIV) - "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

As Christians, that is the family resemblance we should all share.

Love not only for other Christians but for everyone.

Matthew 22:37-40 (NIV) Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Blessings,

Jim Pokorny

The Other Brother Jim

Look for me at http://faithfulfeetteam.blogspot.com/ on Friday, January 17, 2014.

Please enjoy the contributions of my fellow Christian bloggers while you are there!

I’ll be back here on Friday, January 24, 2014.

Green with Envy

Matthew 6:19 (NET) - Do not accumulate for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.


Exodus 20:17 (NET) - You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that belongs to your neighbor.

Scripture warns us about both worldliness and covetousness.

In reflecting on these conditions I realized that both the world and desire of another’s possessions often go hand in hand.

The world begins to influence us very early in life. It makes us desire the things others have which we do not.

I asked myself when did worldliness and covetousness first enter my life and the answer came both quickly and easily.

It happened when I started the first grade and involved, of all things, crayons!

Yes, even something as seemingly benign and innocent looking as a box of crayons can be used by the world in a negative way on young minds.

Before I started first grade, my mother took me to the store to get the supplies I would need according to the local school system.

One of the items on the list they provided was a box of eight crayons.

One day, shortly after school began, the teacher asked us to get out our crayons as she passed out a worksheet we were supposed to color.

As we got out our crayons, I quickly realized that not everyone was limited to eight crayons.

Many had sixteen, some had twenty four, a few had forty eight and two actually had sixty four.

Notice that I still remember that exactly two had sixty four crayons.

How I envied those two when I compared their boxes of sixty four to my paltry box of eight.

In the world of adults, this would be comparable to someone living in a modest home envying someone of their mansion.

For weeks, I remember pleading with my parents to get me a box of sixty four crayons but to no avail.

Eventually, they gave in and bought me a box of twenty four.

In our little world, that of first graders, it was the number of crayons one had that determined our social standing.

As a Christian adult and In hindsight, this was a silly thing. To a small child’s mind, it seemed like one of the most important things of all.

Yet, that is exactly the kind of hold the world can have on us throughout our lives.

If we permit it.

Without Jesus, the only thing that really changes is the price of our toys.

Jesus overcomes the grip the world has on our lives.

By the way, there is an additional lesson I have learned from all of this.

Back then, when a child with few crayons, like me, would ask to borrow a particular color from someone who had more the response was usually the same.

"My father (or mother) told me not to let anybody use them."

We are each blessed by our Heavenly Father in many ways.

Our Heavenly Father expects us to share our blessings with others and not keep them for ourselves.

He even gave us the greatest example of all when He shared His Only Son with us in order that we be saved.

We may have outgrown crayons, but we dare not let material wealth in the adult world have the same kind of hold.

Everyone needs to grow up sometime.

We do that when we mature as believers.

1 Corinthians 13:11 (NET) - When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became an adult, I set aside childish ways.


Blessings,
Jim Pokorny
The Other Brother Jim
Look for me at http://faithfulfeetteam.blogspot.com/ on Friday, May 17, 2013.
Please enjoy the contributions of my fellow Christian bloggers while you are there!
I’ll be back here on Friday, May 24, 2013.
Schedule subject to change.

Thoughts of Home

A few weekends ago, I was in my old neighborhood.

As I drove through it, I noticed thick black clouds of smoke billowing into the sky.

Authorities redirected traffic so I was not able to get too near the source, but it was obvious that either a house or a business was going up in flames.

The winds were high that day, so I knew that there was not much hope in saving the structure.

As traffic was being diverted from the scene, I offered up a prayer for both the safety of the occupants and the firefighters.

About a week later, I found myself in the area again, and decided to drive past the site where the inferno took place.

A very strange feeling overtook me when I saw the remains of that house.

It was not just any house.

That house was my boyhood home.

I spent my first and most formative years in that house.

Although that was several decades ago, a flood of very vivid memories returned to me.

I remembered the floral wallpaper in the living room.

I remembered how the floor in that room leaned just enough so I could stack all but one of my wooden blocks.

Try as I might, I could never get that final block in its place on top of the stack.

Time and again the tower I created would tip over with that final block and come crashing to the floor (I was a rather persistent child).

I remembered the old black and white television in the corner that picked up the only three channels that were available.

I remembered the huge sink in which Mother or sometimes my grandmother would bathe me when I was very, very small.

I remembered the sandbox Father built for me on the back porch.

I remembered the large dining room table where my parents and I would share a meal and play games.

I remembered my bedroom where my parents taught me how to pray at the close of my day.

Then there was my favorite memory of all.

On one of those very rare occasions that it snowed, I remember Mother opening all of the curtains in the dining room for me.

As this was my first snowfall, she did this just for me so that I could watch the snow as it gently fell blanketing everything in white.

I remembered staring out of each one of those windows in turn completely mesmerized by that sight.

These were but some of my memories from that home all those decades ago.

All that physically remains now is the badly charred frame of what was a very old house.

But, there still remains something of a wonderful home forever preserved in some very old and very precious memories.

Memories that I will carry with me always.

There is indeed a difference between a house and a home.

A house is a but structure designed to provide shelter.

A home is where you live... really live.

As I considered that, scripture came to mind.

A house, like any other possession is temporary.

Matthew 6:19-20 (NET) - "Do not accumulate for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal. But accumulate for yourselves treasures in heaven , where moth and rust do not destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal."

A house, even that which we consider home, is a necessity while we are here, but our real home awaits us in heaven.

Philippians 3:20 (NET) - But our citizenship is in heaven - and we also await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ,...

Unlike the houses we live in here, our home in heaven will be permanent.

It will be moth proof, rust proof and yes, even fire proof.

I guess some old sayings have at least some truth in them.

Home is where the heart is.

We just need to make certain that our hearts are in the right place.

Jesus can help us with that if we will but let him.



Blessings,
Jim Pokorny
The Other Brother Jim
Look for me at http://faithfulfeetteam.blogspot.com/ on Friday, February 15, 2013.
Please enjoy the contributions of my fellow Christian bloggers while you are there!
I’ll be back here on Friday, February 22, 2013.
Schedule subject to change.