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Jul 7 2013

‘Til Death Do Us Part


Almost everyone who is married, or will be married, will have repeated some variation of this traditional phrase, “‘til death do us part“, which is common language in wedding vows, especially Christian weddings. This vow reflects God’s design for marriage, one man and one woman married for life. Marriages are to be for life, so in the best of marriages the death of either partner ends the marriage. Just today at our church a couple received a standing ovation and loud applause at the announcement of their 50th anniversary. They obviously are happily married but that happy marriage will end when one or the other dies.

My wife’s marriage ended to her beloved Terry in August of 1997. At only 52 years old, Terry was much too young in our view to die with a sudden heart attack. In December of that same year my wife Jeanine also died suddenly with heart failure and only 10 days before her 44th birthday. Out of those two shared experiences, several months after Carol and I were married in 1999, she suggested to me that we should reach out a helping hand to those, who like us, had lost a spouse or some other loved one. Since then we have facilitated, or co-facilitated, grief groups for well over a decade. Some of those who read this post will have been in some of our sessions. If so, part of what I am going to share will be repetitive, but just hang in there with me, some of this I have not said before.

I have some challenges for those readers who are “single again”. I particularly have in mind widows and widowers, but if you are single again because of divorce this applies to you as well.

If your spouse has died you are not married any more. 

Your marriage ended the day your partner died. You will never be married to that person again. No, not even in heaven. That marriage, as much as you cherished it and loved the one who died, is over. Marriage is for life on earth only.

Since you are not married, don’t continue to try to live as if you are.

Many widows and widowers live for years after the death of their beloved spouse as if he or she was still living. You are no longer bound to a marriage vow. You no longer need to consider a husband or wife before making a decision, about anything. You are single, live like you are single!

I’m not advocating that you join a dating service at once. Dating might be way down the road for you, or never for some of you. While that is true, you are completely free to do what you want to do! If there is some activity that you have always wanted to be involved in, but didn’t because it wasn’t something your mate enjoyed, do it! You are single!

Spend some of the inheritance and take a trip to Europe with your friends, buy a convertible, redecorate the house in a way that suits YOUR tastes. Sell your deceased husbands old truck, or boat, he will not be using it. Do something nice for you!

And, when the time is right, accept an invitation to dinner or a play from a nice member of the opposite sex. It’s OK, you are not married, so stop living as if you are. You are not married and unless you remarry, you will never be married again. Live your life, it’s yours alone now, enjoy it with God’s blessing.

Don’t allow your emotions to do your thinking.

When I was a child I would go to downtown Asheville to the theater with my cousins and friends and we would watch scary movies. There were times I was sure that I was in grave danger! I was horrified! My emotions were lying to me! The truth was, I was sitting in a padded seat, with a big soda and pop corn, just as safe as could be.

Women especially tend toward making emotional decisions rather than rational decisions. “I just don’t feel that I should….”. “…he liked that old thing so much I…”. I suggest this exercise. Sit at your desk and take a sheet of paper. On one side put PROS and on the other CONS. Each time you face a decision that you seem to be struggling with, go back to that sheet of paper and write down your objections, negatives, reasons not to… And on the other list the reasons you should, or why it would be OK. Do NOT let your emotions rule you. You be in charge with clear, Holy Spirit controlled thinking!

Men, though not as prone to making emotional decisions as women are likely to get trapped too. Men, largely because we are so utterly HELPLESS, tend toward making snap decisions. When the lawn mower stops running we want to fix it as soon as possible. We are geared for the Quick Fix. Guys, do not allow yourself to have romantic thoughts about someone until at a minimum of six months to a year. Loneliness will drive you to do things you will deeply regret later.

Don’t be controlled by grown children or nosy neighbors.

“I would do ( fill in the blank) but I don’t know what Mr and Mrs Busybody across the street would think”. “I don’t know if the kids would approve or not”. Really? Are you going to let some neighbor’s opinion dictate your life? Will you now go from parent to child because your spouse died? You should do what you want to, period.

If you want to remodel the kitchen or move to Florida or get a new hair style, or God forbid, go to dinner with the nice widower down the block, DO IT. I  think it would be good to tell your children of your decision, after you have made it. You might sit them down and tell them in a loving way how the “cow ate the cabbage”, if you know what I mean. You might start by affirming your love and respect for their father (or mother), and assure them that what you learned from him or her in those years is a treasure. “But, daddy is not here now and I must make my own way and make my own decisions with God’s help. I have never liked some things about this house, so I have decided to put it on the market  and I’m going to move close to town in a zero lot line home where I don’t have to be worried with yard work. I love you and appreciate your love and support as I make this big change in my life.”. If they support you, great! If they don’t, acknowledge their complaints, and repeat again, I’m single now and I must make my own life by myself”, then do what you want.

You are single again, live like it!

Of course you want to be smart and loving in all that you do. And, you don’t want to unnecessarily offend those you love. And, you need time to grieve, maybe six months to a year, before you make any significant decisions. This is especially true of finances, real estate transactions, and romantic relationships. But when it’s the right time, and you will know it, You be the boss (under God) of your life and live it to full for Jesus sake and to God’s glory. It accomplishes nothing for your to spend the rest of your life with the constraints of marriage and none of the benefits. Single is good. Single is no less holy than marriage. May God bless you as you live your abundant life under His beautiful Lordship.

Royce Ogle
Monroe, LA

Jun 17 2013

Trust and Obey


I started studying the Bible when I was in my early twenties. I had been in Sunday school classes, Vacation Bible school, and  church services but had never had an appetite for learning about God and the Bible. My interest peaked when I started growing up and realizing the responsibilities of being an adult. I was married, struggling financially much of the time, the few prayers I prayed were seemingly not being answered, and I was searching for truth.

As I began to read long passages of Scripture, (even whole books of the Bible), and tried to understand what they really meant to me, I was shocked that at least some of what I had been taught was in my view not biblical. Later, after I entered Bible school for ministry training, I was also shocked that there were so many different views of what I considered to be important doctrines among the staff. It was there that I first was convinced that people of good will can have differing views of many things in the Bible and still work together for the greater good of Christ and the gospel. I learned that the gospel of Christ is truly of first importance, it is the watershed of Bible doctrine and everything else is somewhat less important.

So it was that my training was a mixture of ideas, opinions, and traditions all of which were supported by the Bible according to those who taught them. We were Southern Baptists, we were “free will” people, with many of us coming from the Free Will Baptist perspective. My parents fit that description. Both of my parents were shaped by Free Will Baptist preachers from the hills of Western North Carolina. In their understanding of God and salvation there we many, many more ways to lose your salvation than to find it.

By the time I was in my late 30’s my mother (who was blind) had been exposed to many, many hours of Bible teaching by a variety of teachers by way of radio. She was greatly influenced by J. Vernon McGee, and by her fairly new pastor, Rev. Kenneth Ridings, a great Bible man. My dad had been saved and was on fire for Jesus, and he too, had left some of the old teachings that he had learned in his earlier years. He had been baptized in his 20’s but it was pretty obvious to my mom and everyone who knew him that he really was born again much later in life. His passion was Jesus and telling others about him until he went to meet him in the late spring of 1993.

I was in my late 50’s when I first started to grapple with what some refer to as “the doctrines of grace”, known more widely as Calvinsim, and more narrowly as “monergism”. It was not that I was reading writers who embraced the TULIP of Calvin, it was quite the opposite. I was reading my Bible and started to see dozens of texts that I usually either ignored or believed as I had been covertly taught, “they don’t mean what they say”. The more I studied and read the Bible the more I saw! I came to the place where I had to deal with those obvious truths, many of which were the opposite of what I had believed for decades and taught myself.

It became clear to me that I was in a theological pickle, so to speak. I could not embrace the 5 points of Calvinism, at least the way I understood them. Neither could I any longer believe as some of my friends that election and predestination are “not true”. I was and am a member of great Church of Christ and trust me, “Reformed” or “Calvin” are ugly words in the minds of most Restoration people.

Somewhere around my yearly 60’s, (I’ll be 68 this month) it all started to come together. My mountain of a problem had been that I was trying to find out which doctrine was right. I thought I must believe either the doctrines of grace, or be a full blown Armenian. I knew for sure I was not a true blue “free will” guy and I couldn’t buy all that the Reformed guys were saying, so I was “between a rock and a hard place’, as the saying goes”.

I have said this many times before but I don’t believe people get it. My options as a Christian, as to the written revelation of God is not “either, or“! Christians are not given the liberty to pick and choose what parts of the Bible they will believe and live by. Our’s is to try, the very best we can, with God’s help, to believe and live by ALL of the scriptures. Of course we must use the wisdom God gives to understand it in context, we can’t ignore the widely accepted methods of biblical interpretation.

When dealing with complex and difficult differences in the Bible there is a better option than “either, or”. The far better option is “both, and“. If it is in the Bible it is true! I now have peace about what I was finding in Scripture because I just believe it! Does God bring men to himself and open their understanding and cause them to repent and trust Jesus? Yes! Is man required to repent, and does he have the freedom to say yes or to reject? Yes! The Bible emphatically teaches both, and both are true. So let’s just believe what God says and let him be God!

Today I stumbled across something that perhaps makes much more sense of this idea than I can convey myself. I quote from Justin Taylor’s blog…

What is compatibilistm?

D. A. Carson provides a good introduction when he argues that the following two propositions are both taught and exemplified in the Bible:

  1. God is absolutely sovereign, but his sovereignty never functions in Scripture to reduce human responsibility.
  2. Human beings are responsible creatures—that is, they choose, they believe, they disobey, they respond, and there is moral significance in their choices; but human responsibility never functions in Scripture to diminish God’s sovereignty or to make God absolutely contingent.

Carson right argues that “We tend to use one to diminish the other; we tend to emphasize one at the expense of the other. But responsible reading of the Scripture prohibits such reductionism.”

“Hundreds of passages,” he suggests, “could be explored to demonstrate that the Bible assumes both that God is sovereign and that people are responsible for their actions. As hard as it is for many people in the Western world to come to terms with both truths at the same time, it takes a great deal of interpretative ingenuity to argue that the Bible does not support them.”

I agree! I was mowing my lawn today as I thought about these things and it dawned on me that most of us believe as Carson does to some degree. We hold that a sinner is required to repent and that he has the God given free will to choose to follow Jesus, to come to faith and be baptized. All very true. But, why do we pray for him to come to God? If we don’t on some level believe that God can move a man toward repentance and faith, why pray? If we ask God to change the person’s will are we not admitting that God can change it?

I believe that almost all of us who are Christians would agree that we would not be believers today except for the work of God in our lives. When Jesus said to those rough cut fishermen and others who would be his inner circle, “Follow me”, could they have refused? Yes. But it’s a big deal to me that they didn’t.

Royce Ogle

 

May 28 2013

When you pray…


5 “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.” (Matthew 6:5)

They say confession is good for the soul.

I fight against this temptation but fail far too often. The temptation is when asked to pray in public I tend to give as much attention to the human listeners as the One I am supposedly praying to.

I try to follow these simple guidelines when praying in public.

Keep it short

This past weekend my friend Willie Robertson of Duck Dynasty give the prayer before the NASCAR race in Charlotte. It was the shortest  such prayer I have ever heard. It was to the point, asked what needed to be asked and he was done.

Don’t teach a lesson or preach a sermon

Praying is not telling  everything you know about the Bible and God. Prayer is asking God for what you want and need. And, it seems to me that most of the time it is unnecessary to tell God a bunch of stuff as if He might not know or has forgotten.

Don’t pray to be heard of men

It would be OK if men could give you what you are supposed to be asking for, but they can’t. If you hear someone say “That was such a beautiful prayer”, be alert. Prayers are not intended to be beautiful, they are intended to ask God for what you need or want.

Always be thankful

It is clear to me that in the Bible, thanksgiving usually accompanied prayer. Prayer is asking, giving thanks is not prayer. The Scriptures speak of prayer and thanksgiving in the same verse. I have tried to remember to either give thanks before I ask or after every time I come to him.

Remember. Only those who pray get their prayers answered.

I am firmly convinced from my study of prayer in the Bible that most everyone who prays on a regular basis can expect many specific answers to their prayers. We should teach our children to pray and expect answers. Answers to our prayers should be normal, not abnormal

Royce Ogle
Monroe, LA

 

Apr 10 2013

Some thoughts about the suicide of Pastor Rick Warren’s son


Suicide is a terrible thing, it ends a life and brings untold grief to the ones who love the deceased most. There is no question in my mind, that in most cases, suicide is a sinful act. I say “in most cases” because of the possibility that some who have committed suicide were so mentally unbalanced that they were incapable of rational thought. I think far more suicides would fit this category than we might think. I am no psychologist but but I do know that self preservation is a human’s strongest instinct.

I am no stranger to suicide, my first cousin, a young mother and devoted wife, took her own life and seemed rational to some degree, having carefully planned the act, leaving a well thought out note to her husband and infant son. I have had numerous friends who took their own lives. I have mourned with grieving family’s who had many, many questions and few answers, the most pressing with no answer. Why?

After hearing of Rick and Kay Warren’s loss, and reading some of the most hateful tweets and posts, some supposedly from Christians, my emotions have ranged from pity to intense anger, to sadness, to confusion, and finally to forgiveness. I remember Jesus’ words from the cross, “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing“. if or not people know how gross and ugly their actions are concerning this good family and their departed son, my only option is to forgive. And so, going against my every instinct, I am by faith granting personal forgiveness to those who have sinned terribly by what they have said and continue to say.

Back to Jesus. Yes, suicide is an awful sin (in most cases…). Can if be forgiven? Yes, it has been forgiven. Many serious disciples believe that since the one who takes his or her own life is not able to confess the sin and repent it is not forgiven so the person is therefore lost.

Really? If all the atonement of Jesus did for me was to position me where I am on a day by day bargaining with God about my many sins i am in deep trouble. As I said, this is exactly what many serious Christians believe. Have you thought this through? What if tomorrow afternoon you are killed in a car crash? Did you formally deal with God about every single sin of that day? The answer is NO! You can’t even track all you have thought, or said, or failed to do. As long as you and I live in bodies of flesh we will be to some degree sinful. Is there an answer to this dilemma? Yes!

The atonement of Jesus Christ covers all sin(s), past, present, and future. If not he wasted his life. But he did not waste his life! In Romans 4 the Apostle Paul quotes David in the Psalms, 

just as David also speaks of the blessing of the one to whom God counts righteousness apart from works:

7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
    and whose sins are covered;
8 blessed is the man against whom the Lord will not count his sin.”

You ask, “Royce, surely you don’t believe God is not counting your sins against you, do you?” That is precisely what I believe. If not there is no way I could ever be justified by God. I’m too sinful. Oh, by the way, you are too.

Consider these words:

giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in light. 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (Colossians 1:12-14)

 

He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high (Hebrews 1:3)

 

For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own,26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (Hebrews 9:24-28)

 

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:12)

 

But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God,13 waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. 14 For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified. (Hebrews 10:12-14)

 

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. (! Peter 2:24)

 

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

 

Today is April 10, 2013. How many sins had you committed 1,980 years ago? That is about how long it’s been since Jesus offered his holy life, fulfilling all of God’s righteous requirements for you, by giving his body as a sacrifice for your many sins. How man had you committed in the year 33 AD?

Are you getting picture? An atonement that only covered “past sins” is not much of an atonement! Honestly, my experience is that often I can’t even live up to my own frail standards much less God’s standard which demands 100% perfection.

You see, I have been declared “righteous” (not guilty) on the bases of the life and death of Jesus, not because of my goodness. And, so it is with you if you are in Christ. Here is the deal, a life given for a life, your life, Rick Warren’s son’s life.

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21)

 

If all God had done for us through the sacrificial death of Jesus was to forgive our past sins we would be in trouble. Before the sun went down on the next day we would be lost all over again because God’s demand is a complete holy life. Jesus’ life was that complete holy life, for you and me.

There is a mountain of Bible passages that support these facts. And, I expect there are scores that you suppose cancels these out. Well, I’ll tell you what, you try to reconcile your life with God on a daily, or even hourly basis if you want but I am satisfied with the once for all reconciliation of Jesus precious blood.

God hates sin! God hates suicide! God has done something about it. He judged it all in the person and work of Jesus our great high priest who made one offering for all people for all time. Are you in? I am all in. if not I have no hope of ever getting of my grave or seeing Jesus face to face. I have tried desperately and I find that I am not good enough to be approved by God. By the way friend, you aren’t either. 

I expect Rick Warren’s son to be in heaven along with the tens of millions of former offenders who appropriated the atonement of Jesus for their sins.

I am asking the God of all comfort to be near the Warren family and all those who loved their son. May they know the peace of God that only comes because of peace with God.

Royce Ogle
Monroe, LA