A Little Walk With God

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

This week marked the 244th birthday of the United States, but the way things look in some of our larger cities, anarchy may replace democracy before the year ends. Rioters still take to the streets with cries that they will burn down our cities if they don't get what they want. But will giving in to the demands resolve the issues? The answer is no. It just puts a different bully in the seat of power.

Are the actions taken by some of our authorities right and fair? No. Will the world ever be fair? No. Can you have a fair and just system in place while we struggle with race, gender identity, religion, social injustice, political ideology, and a host of other issues that plague us? Not while people are involved. Whoever is in power puts their spin on what is right, and the opposition will complain about injustice.

The framers of our constitution began an experiment in democracy that the world had never seen. It worked when we elected statemen more interested in the good of the whole than in their reelection and party politics. Unfortunately, over the last four or five decades, we failed to elect statesmen. We now choose between politicians who advance their careers instead of their communities. It happens on both sides of the aisle. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans all leave their state and federal posts significantly wealthier despite their meager salaries from those seats.

What is the answer to our dilemma? First, we need to become educated individually and as a nation. Few of our high school graduates can point to any given state on a map if asked to name them other than California, Florida, New York, and Texas. Many think Chicago is a state instead of a city. Many are confused when told Washington, DC is not a state and has no Senators. Most do not know how the House determines how many of its 435 seats each state and territory get. Most think the President spends tax money – he doesn't; he only approves the budget. The House is responsible for the budget, which they continue to handle poorly.

When we understand how a representative government works, and that real change comes through discourse and the ballot box, not from rioting in the street, change can be made. The thuggery that destroys private property only inflames those who would willing sit across a table from them, try to understand, and make real change. As long as violence seems the only answer, it will only receive violence in return.

We see the same thing happening in Jerusalem as Jesus proclaims a new way of perceiving God's kingdom. The Pharisees see violence against Rome as the way to find release from the Roman empire. Self-proclaimed messiahs had come before Jesus to lead revolts against the empire, and their tombs showed their failure.

Jesus came with a new message. His disciples declared him as Messiah. But then, his friends abandoned, denied, and betrayed him. He willingly gave himself to the unjust trial before the chief priest and the Sanhedrin. He endured the torture and cruel crucifixion of the Romans. He bled and died in the most excruciating and humiliating way men could die.

Not just in his trial and death, but throughout his ministry, many around him mocked him. His words in Matthew's Gospel show us how fickle protests like we see today can be:

'What picture shall I give you for this generation?' asked Jesus. 'It's like a bunch of children sitting in the town square, and singing songs to each other. This is how it goes:

You didn't dance when we played the flute, you didn't cry when we sang the dirge!

'What do I mean? When John appeared, he didn't have any normal food or drink – and people said "What's got into him, then? Some demon?" Then along comes the son of man, eating and drinking normally, and people say, "Ooh, look at him – guzzling and boozing, hanging around with tax-collectors and other riff-raff." But, you know, wisdom is as wisdom does – and wisdom will be vindicated!' (Matthew 11:16-19 NTE)

That's what I see in the autonomous zones and the call to disband police in our country. No cops, then they cry about injustice when a murder happens in the zone and help doesn't come. Protesters were injuring innocent bystanders, then standing behind the police for protection from citizens who want revenge on the perpetrator. We are fickle. We don't stop to think. We fail to sit and listen to each other. Our politicians and especially our media, take the worst events and blow them out of proportion to enrage each side of any argument until no middle ground can exist.

We need to stop. We need to look to the cross. We need to remember a Savior came to show us how to love the unlovable. He died for us all to forgive and finally defeat sin and death and the grave. The kingdom of God came in the form of a human, King of kings. His power usurps all powers, not through violence, but love. His grace overshadows all injustice, not through overthrow, but servanthood.

Believing in Jesus as Messiah, God come to earth to deliver us, and following him results in his spirit residing in our hearts, directing our actions. Those actions will not end in violence against our neighbor but acts of love and kindness. Those actions will demonstrate the fruit of his spirit as Paul enumerates:  "love, joy, peace, great-heartedness, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. There is no law that opposes things like that!"

When we let his spirit work in and through us, our world will change. We can be part of its renewal. We can see "God's kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven." We can exercise his will wherever we might stand. And in doing so, we can hear the words Jesus prayed and his promise to those who struggle in this life. Listen to the prayer from Matthew:

At that time Jesus turned to God with this prayer: 'I give you my praise, father, Lord of heaven and earth! You hid these things from the wise and intelligent and revealed them to children! Yes, father, that's the way you decided to do it! My father gave me everything: nobody knows the son except the father, and nobody knows the father except the son – and anyone the son wants to reveal him to.

'Are you having a real struggle? Come to me! Are you carrying a big load on your back? Come to me – I'll give you a rest! Pick up my yoke and put it on; take lessons from me! My heart is gentle, not arrogant. You'll find the rest you deeply need. My yoke is easy to wear, my load is easy to bear.' (Matthew 11:25-30 NTE)

Do you want to rest from your struggle? Do you want help with your burden? Do you want real change to happen in your life? It won't change the world, yet. It might not change our country, yet. But it will change you when you give yourself to him. Today is the day of salvation. Call on his name and let him take the load, and he will give you rest.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked NTE are taken from the NEW TESTAMENT FOR EVERYONE: Scripture are taken from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011.

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

The headlines scream about injustice, slavery, equality, and freedom recently. I wish the world could get rid of the first two and understand the last two. I fear we will never do either. We ended our ability to stop injustice and slavery when Adam and Eve decided they wanted to exercise the knowledge of God and found they fell far short. Cain killed his brother for offering a better sacrifice than he. Lamech murdered a young man who hit him. Violence and injustice plagued humankind ever since their rash actions.

Read every account of every nation, and you'll find slavery rampant in its history. The seven wonders of the ancient world probably came into existence on the backs of slaves from conquered nations. Aristocrats in Greece and Rome had as many as 600 slaves attending their individual properties. Many of those providing sport for the spectators in the magnificent Colosseum in Rome were slaves. The great temples and palaces discovered in South America attributed to the Incas and Mayans were the result of slave labor from captured tribes.

Our nation and the western world owes its success to slaves working in fields and homes. The advances throughout history are principally the result of labor provided by conquered people. Is it right? No. Do I condone it? No. Does it still happen in the world? Unfortunately, it does. The drug and sex trafficking that goes on in the "civilized" world under our blinded eyes is nothing less than slavery. The child labor in certain parts of the world certainly borders on the same. We enjoy the benefits of their work while they live in squalid conditions. We think nothing of their slavery and injustice.

The question is, what can we do about it? Is the redistribution of property and wealth called for in some of the recent protests the answer? Examine countries that have tried it in the past, and you'll find it doesn't work. That ideology is known as socialism or communism, take your pick. The Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China are the best examples of those ideologies. Dissenters of the government policies don't survive long within their borders. Government officials live in relative luxury compared to the rest of the populace, and even their luxury does not compare well to our upper-middle-class lifestyle in this country. Legislation cannot break the myth of equality we hope to find in our broken world.

But we have hope. There is a way if we will but take it. We will still be slaves, but we are slaves now. All of us. Paul talks about it in his letter to the church in Rome in these words:

12 So don't allow sin to rule in your mortal body, to make you obey its desires. 13 Nor should you present your limbs and organs to sin to be used for its wicked purposes. Rather, present yourselves to God, as people alive from the dead, and your limbs and organs to God, to be used for the righteous purposes of his covenant. 14 Sin won't actually rule over you, you see, since you are not under law but under grace.

15 What then? Shall we sin, because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not! 16 Don't you know that if you present yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you really are slaves of the one you obey, whether that happens to be sin, which leads to death, or obedience, which leads to final vindication? 17 Thank God that, though you once were slaves to sin, you have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were committed. 18 You were freed from sin, and now you have been enslaved to God's covenant justice (19 I'm using a human picture because of your natural human weakness!). For just as you presented your limbs and organs as slaves to uncleanness, and to one degree of lawlessness after another, so now present your limbs and organs as slaves to covenant justice, which leads to holiness.

20 When you were slaves of sin, you see, you were free in respect of covenant justice. 21 What fruit did you ever have from the things of which you are now ashamed? Their destination is death. 22 But now that you have been set free from sin and enslaved to God, you have fruit for holiness. Its destination is the life of the age to come. 23 The wages paid by sin, you see, are death; but God's free gift is the life of the age to come, in the Messiah, Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6: 12-23 NTE)

We are either slaves to sin or slaves to God. He gives us the freedom to choose which we will follow, but we can't be in the middle. Obedience to him or sin, those are the choices with no middle ground. You say, "I want to be free to do whatever I want."

Can I tell you that is not freedom. Obedience is real freedom. It's like driving a car. I'm free to drive on the wrong side of the road. I'm free to drive off a cliff. I'm free to run into a tree. I'm free to drive 100 mph. I'm free to do all of those things, but I probably won't live very long or at least will pay a very high price doing so. But if I obey the rules set out by an authority higher than me – stay in my lane, drive the speed limit, obey the traffic laws – I am likely to have a much more pleasant experience and drive my car for years without unpleasant consequences.

It's the same with the laws God sets in place. We sometimes act like dumb animals and try to stick our heads through the fence to get to the grass on the other side. When we do, we get stuck or shocked, or the barbed-wire leaves horrible scars to remind us of our foolishness. But inside the fence, God placed luscious green pastureland, full of nutritious food. We are free to run and frolic in the field all day with him with no fear.

Why do we push through the fence? Like Adam, we think we are smarter than God. We want what we think is freedom. We want to do what we want to do. That is not freedom. It leads to addiction, pain, suffering, the penalty of sin is death. You can choose who you will follow but think about where real freedom lies. It's not in breaking the rules, but in following them. It's not in ridding the world of injustice but ridding my heart of injustice. It's in making myself a slave to righteousness.

The problem across our country and around the world is not one of inequality and injustice as much as our thinking we can be equal with God. He is God; we are not. When we figure that out and let him be God in our lives, his love will begin to show through us. The violence will stop. The injustice will end. Slavery will no longer exist. Evil will be defeated. Unfortunately, I predict broken humanity will continue to enjoy its brokenness until Jesus returns. Some will follow him; many will not.

Those who listen to God's spirit must share his love, demonstrate the kind of humanness God intended from the beginning, show not justice but grace to a world in desperate need of God's grace now more than ever.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked NTE are taken from the NEW TESTAMENT FOR EVERYONE: Scripture are taken from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011.

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

What's happening around the world reminds me of a situation Paul addressed when he wrote his letter to the church in Rome. As I watch the nation tire of the pandemic, people forget the disease has not been conquered. It is still as contagious and as dangerous as ever. The spread has not stopped.

Federal and state officials gave us some pretty drastic measures to slow the spread, and it worked while we implemented them. We stayed in our homes, and instead of the predicted hundred million infected, we stand at just over two million. Instead of more than a million dead, we are just over 115 million. But we tired of staying at home. We decided we didn't want to wear masks or keep our distance.

The number of cases across the United States is showing our dislike of being told what to do. Some are saying the increase in numbers is the second wave of the pandemic. Unfortunately, it is not. It is our failure to do what would stop the disease from spreading. The second wave will not come until late fall, October or November, when the virus will again race through the world with another equally virulent strain, just like a flu season. We understand how coronaviruses operate. This virus is just a new one, more contagious, more deadly.

In our haste to get out of our homes, we forgot the rules about what keeps the disease at bay. It's not that we can't get out of our homes, but we have to do the things that keep us safe. Masks to stop asymptomatic carriers from spreading the virus to the vulnerable in our population who then take it home to the rest of the family.

Scientists estimate that 85% of those infected, now, are infected by another family member. That happens because someone carelessly goes out without thinking about risks to others and spreads the disease. The unmasked share the virus, and one of them takes it home to their family, and more than half of that family will end up in the hospital. Those are the current statistics.

So why does that careless transmission remind me of Paul's letter to the Romans? Because there were some, who received God's grace, his forgiveness, and thought they could just take advantage of it. Here is Paul's answer to them.

What are we to say, then? Shall we continue in the state of sin, so that grace may increase? 2 Certainly not! We died to sin; how can we still live in it? 3 Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into the Messiah, Jesus, were baptized into his death? 4 That means that we were buried with him, through baptism, into death, so that, just as the Messiah was raised from the dead through the father's glory, we too might behave with a new quality of life. 5 For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection.

6 This is what we know: our old humanity was crucified with the Messiah, so that the bodily solidarity of sin might be abolished, and that we should no longer be enslaved to sin. 7 A person who has died, you see, has been declared free from all charges of sin.

8 But if we died with the Messiah, we believe that we shall live with him. 9 We know that the Messiah, having been raised from the dead, will never die again. Death no longer has any authority over him. 10 The death he died, you see, he died to sin, once and only once. But the life he lives, he lives to God. 11 In the same way you, too, must calculate yourselves as being dead to sin, and alive to God in the Messiah, Jesus. (Romans 5:1-11 NTE)

The more I read and study Jesus' words, the more I understand his kingdom is already here. Jesus' death and resurrection inaugurated the coming of the kingdom to earth. He is the king of the kingdom of God. God invites us into his kingdom as his children when we believe in Jesus as Messiah, the one sent by him to redeem us from our sins. When we ask for his forgiveness, his grace is abundant and he gives it freely, recreating us for his kingdom.

There will be more to this re-creation to come when he returns. Our physical bodies will be transformed into something we don't yet understand. We will obtain a physical form like his resurrected form. One that you can see and touch, yet can appear behind locked doors and disappear without warning as Jesus did during those forty days after his resurrection. We don't understand the physics of how that can happen, but if the early Christians willingly gave their lives for the story of the events, I expect we can believe in their authenticity.

To those who would say, “It’s just not possible.” I would retort, “Neither was flight 150 years ago. Neither was the thought of traveling to the moon 100 years ago. Dark matter was thought a ridiculous hypothesis when posited by Lord Kelvin in 1884. It almost ruined his career as a physicist. It did no better for Henri Poincaré in 1906 or Jacobus Kapteyn in 1922. And the hypothesis wasn’t taken seriously until the 1960’s and 1970’s when nothing else could explain some of the action of subatomic particles physicists saw in cyclotrons.

So what else don’t we know about the universe? For one, we don’t understand how creation happened. Let’s assume for argument’s sake there was a big bang. How did the big bang happen? Where did the material come from? Who compressed into a form that made it bang in the first place? Genesis doesn’t say how. It just says out of nothing, God spoke and there was light. We can find as many arguments as there are people as to how things evolved from there. But it seems few want to argue backward from the bang.

How will God re-create a new heaven and new earth? I don’t know. Will we all “go” to heaven. The more I read, the less I think we will. The more I read, I think heaven will “come” to earth. Remember Jesus’ message? The kingdom of heaven is near. God’s kingdom is near. This is what the kingdom of God is like. He tells us to pray, “Your [God’s] kingdom come, on earth…”

So what does that mean for us? I think it means we need to prepare for his coming when he will reign in his new kingdom here. Will he remake it and restore it? Yes. But maybe, just maybe those who follow him will be left to help re-create it into God’s original design for his kingdom. And what was that original design? Humanity caring for all of his creation - tending the animals; caring for the plants; helping each other; living in harmony with each other and with God; God walking in his kingdom with humanity.

I think it also means the more we mess up this place now, the more we will have to clean up when he comes. I’m not sure he will wave a magic wand and make everything go away. Could he do that? Sure. Will he do that? I’m not so sure about that. “Idle hands are the devil’s workshop,” cannot be found in the Bible, but Solomon and Paul imply it. James almost tells us the same thing. It may be that 1,000-year reign Revelation talks about is the time it will take to put everything back the way it’s supposed to be.

So now that I’ve rattled your theology with some things to contemplate for the next week or month or lifetime, I invite you to read carefully Jesus’ words. Don’t just skim through them the way we usually do because they become so familiar to us, but really read them. I think you’ll find that nowhere does he say his followers will “go” to heaven or his kingdom, but rather the kingdom will “come here.” Think about what difference that makes in how you live day to day.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked NTE are taken from the NEW TESTAMENT FOR EVERYONE: Scripture are taken from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011.

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

We will remember 2020. Many said that about 1963, the year President Kennedy was shot. And 1967, the year we Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were assassinated. And 1990, when the world faced off against Iraq after they invaded Kuwait. And 2001, when the Twin Towers fell in New York City. But this year, wow! Coronavirus has infected two million Americans and seven million globally. More than 110,000 have died in this country, and we are approaching a half million around the world.

Then the murder hornets invaded the west coast. Shortly after, protests against racial injustice swept across the country, turning violent in too many places, causing millions of dollars in damages and the deaths of innocent people of all colors. The economists already declared a recession. Stocks almost recovered to pre-COVID heights, but only because of speculative trading if you read the tea leaves correctly. Companies that have already filed Chapter 7 and 11 bankruptcy stocks are exploding because uninformed traders think they will bounce back. They probably won't, which means those stocks look artificially and dangerously high. Those traders are about to lose their investments when the stock market stabilizes in the next few weeks and months.      

Unemployment stands almost as high as during the depression. And this phenomenon isn't limited to the US. It reaches around the globe because of the pandemic that, except for a handful, affects every country. Suffering is everywhere. You see hopelessness in the eyes of millions. But there is an answer to the desperation that seems so pervasive in the situations that predominate this year. Despite the terrible events that keep piling one on the other, I can assure you; there is hope.

That hope isn't found in another stimulus check, though. There isn't enough money in the world to buy hope. You won't find hope in legislation that brings equality to every race, we've tried that. It failed before and will fail again. Defunding police departments won't stop police brutality, but it will unleash an unbridled criminal element on a defenseless citizenry. Vaccines won't stop pandemics. Another disease will sweep through the world in a few years just as virulent as this one with devastating effect.

We can do nothing to provide hope to the world because we created the chaos that plagues us. But we can find hope. The Apostle Paul tells us how in his letter to the early followers of Jesus in the church in Rome in the first century. He writes:

Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness,[a] we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God's glory. 3 But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance, 4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope. 5 This hope doesn't put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

6 While we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. 7 It isn't often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. 8 But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us. (Romans 5:1-8 CEB)

I don't care much for the formula Paul gives us, but through the centuries, Christians prove it true. Trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. We stand firm on that hope; it doesn't put us to shame, we know it to be true, we boast in the hope of God's glory because the Holy Spirit poured God's love into our hearts.

Let’s backtrack through Paul’s formula in these verses. Despite that fact that we were God’s enemies, sinners, disobedient toward him, he showed his love for us by dying for us. He took my sins and your sins to the cross so heaven and earth could join together at that spot. He died for ungodly people, sinners, us.

Why? So by accepting his forgiveness, his spirit could live in us and his love could energize our actions and our love toward others. He enables us to love those we could not love without him. The Holy Spirit pours God’s love into our hearts. We see others differently. We love with his love. His spirit enables us to live a life of love and hope for his glory.

The hope in the Christian throughout the centuries sparked incredible action. Not cathedrals and churches and edifices with stained glass windows, but hospitals, schools, orphanages, shelters for abused women and children, food and clothing pantries, and thousands of other ways men and women help the hurting. Christians run toward the hurting, not away from them.

Please remember, not everyone who says they are Christian have Jesus in their heart. That is the problem with much of Christendom today. Many know the words to say, but have never experienced his life-changing power. Despite their declaration, they are no more Christian than I am a neurosurgeon, even if I said I am. You certainly don’t want me to open your scalp any time soon.

God’s love drives Christians to act because God first loved us, forgave us, and pour his love into our hearts giving us hope for tomorrow. People recognize those loving actions as character. It’s not the money given or the legislator trying to get elected or the pharmaceutical company passing pills. It’s the man or woman standing in the breech helping the needy, getting their hands dirty, disregarding what others might think of them for doing so that defines character.

And helping those in need means getting involved in life and life is messy. It always means endurance. Life is not a sprint, but a marathon. In the church we often remark methods change, but the message never changes. It’s the same with life. Involving ourselves with others is always messy, always emotional, always painful at times, but it is the work God calls us to do if we love as he loves. Imagine if God had given up on you the first time you did something wrong. Where would you be? Can we do any less for those he puts in our path? Endure.

What do we endure? Problems. Trouble. Suffering. Life. We face all the issue of life good and a lot of bad because we, humanity, brought sin into the world and every one of us contributes to that pile. None of us are free from it. Each of us brings our little piece of selfishness to the table and until we give ourselves completely to Christ, we continue to contribute to the mess call life. Even then, our imperfections in this world will cause pain and suffering to those around us. We can’t help it. We will be misunderstood, misinterpreted, abused, maligned. But we also don’t need to complain about it. Jesus went to the cross misunderstood, misinterpreted, abused, maligned. He died for us.

We have access into God’s grace, his unmerited favor, by faith through Jesus. Because we have access to God’s grace, we have peace with God through Jesus. And because of his faithfulness we are made righteous before God. That is not a small thing.

Remember what Isaiah said when he saw God behind the cherubim seated on his throne? “Woe, I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips.” God put his hand over Moses so he would not see his face and die. He did the same with Elijah. We cannot stand in the presence of a holy God. But because of Jesus sacrifice on the cross, we are made righteous before him and invited into his presence. How awesome a privilege that we should never take for granted.

2020 is an unforgettable year. Make it so not because of the problems highlighted in the news, but because of a renewed relationship with the King of kings. Meditate on Romans 5:1-8 and remember that “while we were still weak, at the right moment, Christ died for ungodly people. 7 It isn't often that someone will die for a righteous person, though maybe someone might dare to die for a good person. 8 But God shows his love for us, because while we were still sinners Christ died for us.”

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked CEB are taken from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE (CEB): Scriptures taken from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE copyright© 2011, 2012. Used by permission.

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

I hope this week will not be like last week. I hope things settle down and the looting, riots, and violence that accompanied the protests over the apparent racial injustice across the country. The swift action of the protestors bothered me as the demonstrations began before investigators and prosecutors even had time to make their case. I trust justice will prevail as courts review the evidence, and a jury of the officers' peers make decisions about their guilt or innocence.

We need to stop the violence from both sides. Burning cars, breaking windows, looting stores only adds to the illusion that violence requires violence for resolution. But that never works. It only escalates the violent actions from both sides, and innocent people suffer because of it. Certainly, there must be better ways to solve the issues facing the nation than burning down the land where we live and work and raise our children. The destruction makes no sense.

As always, in these situations, we forget that except for the amount of melanin residing in the melanocytes in the epidermis, we are the same. The more melanin, the darker our skin tone. We all have about the same number of melanocytes; it's just how much melanin those cells produce. Do an autopsy on any of us and cut through that epidermis, and we all look the same inside. Our hearts are in the same place. Our lungs look and operate in the same way. Our stomachs and intestines don't need different roadmaps to find them based on race or color of our skin. We are very much the same inside.

So why do we become so obsessed with the color of someone's skin? I think because there is usually something we don't like about ourselves, so we need to find a way to think ourselves better than them. Whether black, white, yellow, brown, red, or purple, I want to overlook my faults, and to do that, I find fault in those not like me. In Viet Nam, we fought Gooks, not Vietnamese. In Desert Storm, the enemy was ragheads, not Iraqi soldiers or the ancestors of the proud Persian people. In every war, we make the enemy something less than human to make it easier to engage them.

Unfortunately, we have done the same across the world and now within our nation. We are setting ourselves up to destroy ourselves internally in a kind of civil war that has yet to identify precisely how the combatant will align. Politics divide us deeper than in our nearly 250-year history. It is almost impossible to hear a middle ground in any debate anymore. Politics exists only in the far-left and far-right extremes today.

The same seems true as we divide economically. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, our laws support the division of family groups into a widening gap between the rich and poor with fewer considered middle-class. And laws designed to assist the poor, instead keep them below the poverty line and encourage the dissolution of family units or their financial situation would become even worse. While we do all of this, our elected officials make themselves fat at our expense with a national debt impossible to pay. Divided equally, to pay our national debt, every American from the oldest to the youngest now owes about $70,000 each. Any of us handling our personal bank accounts the same way Congress handles our taxes would face imprisonment for fraud, theft, or embezzling. We can't keep spending what we will never earn.

So how do we fix the mess we created for ourselves over the last several decades? First, we need to remember who we are from the start. Look back at the beginning to see a description of how we began and our responsibilities in this place called Earth. You'll find it in the very first chapter of Genesis, the beginning.

26 Then God said, "Let us make humanity in our image to resemble us so that they may take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the earth, and all the crawling things on earth."

27 God created humanity in God's own image,         in the divine image God created them,[a]             male and female God created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fertile and multiply; fill the earth and master it. Take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and everything crawling on the ground." 29 Then God said, "I now give to you all the plants on the earth that yield seeds and all the trees whose fruit produces its seeds within it. These will be your food. 30 To all wildlife, to all the birds in the sky, and to everything crawling on the ground—to everything that breathes—I give all the green grasses for food." And that's what happened. 31 God saw everything he had made: it was supremely good.

There was evening and there was morning: the sixth day. (Genesis 1:26-31 CEB)

We see in these verses; God made all of us. He also gave us the responsibility to care for everything else he created. I think that includes each other. It doesn't mean coddle, but nurture, teach, bring to maturity. I see that command in Jesus last words to His disciples before He ascended into heaven after His resurrection when He said:

"I've received all authority in heaven and on earth. 19 Therefore, go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to obey everything that I've commanded you. Look, I myself will be with you every day until the end of this present age." (Matthew 28:18-20 CEB)

Go into all the world doesn't leave anyone out. It includes every place, every continent, every people, every race. Teaching them everything He taught goes back to the beginning of time. Be the people God intended you to be. Take care of this place. Take care of each other. Extend mercy and grace to each other. Demonstrate God's love to one another. Let everyone know the importance of every human life because each one mirrors God's image, the creator of the universe. Within us lives the spark of God's creative genius and His breath of life.

How should we treat each other? The videos dominating social media and the news over the last several days clearly demonstrate how not to live. Fortunately, we do not live in North Korea or under Sharia Law. If we did, those looters and demonstrators from the several last days would be summarily executed in front of our courthouses after kangaroo trials. Those reporting the incidents without trying to stop the violence would probably face imprisonment or worse as well.

We still live in a land of opportunity. We must pause and take a hard look at ourselves. Some of our authorities clearly stepped over the line in recent days, but not all of them. Most of our law enforcement and first responders serve proudly without prejudice protecting all citizens' rights and property. Most deserve our respect and honor. We need a better way to find and root out the bad actors and punish them when they abuse their authority. But as in any community, that percentage of bad actors is small, just as the number of violent actors in the recent protests represented a small percentage of those present.

We must be careful not to let the small percentage of bad actors prejudice our judgment against a community, whether a race of people, a police department, a government agency, or a nation. A few bad actors do not represent the whole. In our haste to stereotype, may God stop us and remind us He made everything very good. We are the ones who damaged His creation, but with His help, we can also restore it in many ways. Before thinking everyone is like the few in the news or social media, remember, God made us all, and He makes all things good.

Then turn to Paul's last words to the church in Corinth. Listen to his warning to them:

11 Finally, brothers and sisters, good-bye. Put things in order, respond to my encouragement, be in harmony with each other, and live in peace—and the God of love and peace will be with you.

12 Say hello to each other with a holy kiss.[a] All of God's people say hello to you.

13 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. (2 Corinthians 13:11-13 CEB)

 If we work to put things in order, respond to encouragement, be in harmony with each other, and live in peace – the God of love and peace will overshadow us. The violence will end. The prejudice will stop. We will become the people God made us to be. I urge you to let His word sink into your heart instead of the political vitriol that pours through the media in the next days.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked CEB are taken from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE (CEB): Scriptures taken from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE copyright© 2011, 2012. Used by permission.

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

If you are like me, you probably can't help but read at least some of the news every day about what's happening around the world with this pandemic. Here we are with over 100,000 deaths in the US. It's a little hard to believe something like this would happen in our lifetime with all the advancements in medical care, but we face it every day. And the end still reaches out in front of us with a predicted second wave in just a few short months.

I'm encouraged by some of the news, though. I read a few stories about celebrities giving hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars to feed those less fortunate. Those left without jobs as a result of businesses closing to stem the tide of the viral spread. It's great to see those stories sneak into the overwhelming number of bad news articles of gloom and doom that bombard us every day.

What I find most fascinating from today's news, though, is the almost total absence of the little things that neighbors and strangers do in small ways to help each other in this crisis. We tout the big splash people we don't expect to share their wealth when they do so but never talk about the millions of those who generously share every day, easing the suffering of those around them.

As an associate pastor, I get to watch the actions of my church and its members as they share their lives. A food pantry serves almost four hundred families a week with dry goods,  produces, and baked items for a family of four. Hopefully, we will be able to again open the clothing pantry, job assistance, and life skills classes like GED completion when some of the social separation restrictions ease.

I see stories of members making meals for shut-ins, providing contact and comfort for those who have lost friends and loved ones, and cannot grieve as we could before the COVID restrictions in hospital and funeral settings. I hear about drive-by birthday parties and graduation celebrations. I watch zoom groups connect just to share with each other and make sure we are all okay mentally and physically throughout the week. Food at a neighbor's door. A yard randomly mowed. Flowers left on a doorstep. Cards zipping through the mail. Tokens of gratitude showing up through Amazon deliveries. Dozens of small, seemingly insignificant acts that brighten the day of another person that extends the love of Christ.

Those names will never make the news. Their acts of kindness will go unnoticed by the general public. CNN will not put a camera or a microphone in front of them and marvel at their generosity and splash their picture across the Mega Screen in Times Square. But God takes not of every act we do. Paul enumerates the responsibilities of those reborn in his letter to the church in Rome.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;

Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; (Romans 8:9-16 NIV)

One word sums up our responsibility. Love. Jesus gave us two commands that engulf the rest of what we should do as citizens of his kingdom. Love God and love others. That's it. He went on to say we can't love God, who we can't see, if we don't love others we can see.

The unusual conditions we face today present an incredible opportunity for Christians to show what it means to love God. Loving him means we must love others, too. Jesus said it. He understood it and demonstrated it for the thirty-plus years he lived with us. We certainly make mistakes in how we present ourselves as Christians from time to time, but now is an excellent time just to show those around us that we care.

Find ways to connect. Take a meal to a neighbor and leave it on their doorstep. Ring the bell and go. We don't need credit for doing God's work. We don't need our names in the paper or CNN showing up. All I care about is that my name is written in the Book of Life. But because of everything he has done for me, doesn't he deserve my giving something in return?

It's interesting when you look at some statistics. Congress continually talks about wanting to help those in need through legislation and programs. The average income in the Senate is just over $2M a year and in the House, just over $1.5M a year. Yet their charitable giving according to their tax records average less than 2%. So I guess they just want to help with our money, not theirs. Because middle-income charitable giving hovers closer to 10%, I sometimes wonder where our elected officials' hearts are. Do they really want to help, or do they want to get votes from those with a heart to help? It does raise an interesting question.

Should we look at Paul's description of our responsibilities again? Perhaps it will encourage you to be different in this new normal we face. Some things have changed for the better because of our separation from the hustle and bustle of life. Maybe we can focus on what we should do as the body of Christ as some of the constraints lift in the coming days. Listen again and let Paul's words settle not just in your mind and heart, but in your hands and feet as you daily work as for the Lord.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good;

Love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor.

Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord.

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.

Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.

Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.

Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; (Romans 8:9-16 NIV)

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV): Scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™. Used by permission of Zondervan

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

As this podcast comes out, we celebrate Memorial Day in the United States. A time to remember servicemen and women who have fallen in service to our country. But the day has become more of an extra day for sales in retail stores and the day that marks the opening of parks and recreation facilities than a day of remembrance. 

Perhaps this year will be a little. Most of the country still suffers under severe economic strain, so we don't have a lot of money to spend, no matter how good the sales might be. Some parks and facilities could open, but remain closed due to the constraints placed on them. Beaches opened in most places, but many remain empty for fear of viral spread. 

This year is different in many ways. Doors stay shut. Everyone remains at double-arms length. Masks are not just a fashion statement, but protection against an unseen enemy. 

Perhaps we can take time this Memorial Day to think about those who put themselves in harm's way to protect us. As we continue to struggle through these uncertain days with the Corona-SARS-2 virus wreaking havoc around the world, thousands stand in the gap for us trying to make sense of the disease and stop the flood of sick and dying. 

Memorial Day has always been about the Armed Forces in the past. Still, I don't think it would be out of line to remember the first responders and medical professionals that work tirelessly to keep us as healthy as possible under these incredible conditions as well. Having served in the Army Medical Department, many of my friends and acquaintances still serve in those most dangerous areas, putting their lives at risk for us. Many of those professionals not only suffered the effects of the disease, but as you know, some succumbed to its effects and passed away. They, too, died for their fellow man, just as soldiers and sailors, airmen and marines. 

Peter wrote to early Christians suffering under the hands of persecutors. In his letter, he encourages them to rejoice. He wrote:

12 Dear friends, don't be surprised about the fiery trials that have come among you to test you. These are not strange happenings. 13 Instead, rejoice as you share Christ's suffering. You share his suffering now so that you may also have overwhelming joy when his glory is revealed. 14 If you are mocked because of Christ's name, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory—indeed, the Spirit of God—rests on you.

And later.

6 Therefore, humble yourselves under God's power so that he may raise you up in the last day. 7 Throw all your anxiety onto him, because he cares about you. 8 Be clearheaded. Keep alert. Your accuser, the devil, is on the prowl like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. 9 Resist him, standing firm in the faith. Do so in the knowledge that your fellow believers are enduring the same suffering throughout the world. 10 After you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, the one who called you into his eternal glory in Christ Jesus, will himself restore, empower, strengthen, and establish you. 11 To him be power forever and always. Amen. 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11 CEB)

I think the longer we endure this pandemic, the more anxious people become. It's natural. We want it to be over. We want to believe science can create a pill or vaccine or something that will take this thing away. Aren't we smart enough with all our genomic studies, our ability to conquer space, our ability to clone a sheep - aren't we able to defeat this simple virus? 

The answer is...maybe. Scientists are working to change a seven to ten-year approval process into a twelve to eighteen-month process. That skips a lot of policies and procedures the government put in place over the years for our protection. I know it sounds like a lot of bureaucracy and a waste of money. Through the years, those precautions saved a lot of lives, though. So we might get a vaccine in a few more months, but I won't hold my breath. 

I think I will listen to Peter's encouragement. This suffering isn't from God. He isn't punishing the world for its evil. We punish ourselves. God is in the business of rescuing us from our sins. He sent his Son for just that purpose. The suffering we endure comes because Adam and Eve introduced disobedience and corruption into the cosmos and disrupted its perfect order. We contribute to that chaos and destruction with every passing generation. 

But remember Peter's words? "... don't be surprised about the fiery trials that have come among you to test you. These are not strange happenings. 13 Instead, rejoice as you share Christ's suffering. You share his suffering now so that you may also have overwhelming joy when his glory is revealed. ... you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory—indeed, the Spirit of God—rests on you."

We may not feel very blessed going through the pandemic separated from our friends and those we cherish. We might long for yesterday when we could go about freely and do as we pleased. We might shake our fist at God, asking why this tragedy sweeps around the world affecting so many of his children. 

To your questions and complaints, you might hear his still, small voice in the whisper of the wind, "Rejoice as you share in your suffering now, so that you may have overwhelming joy when my Son's glory is revealed. You are blessed, for my Spirit rests on you."

In these uncertain times, recognize the blessings that surround you. God holds all of this in his hands and gives us hope even in the face of what may appear hopeless circumstances. Trust him, and as Paul exhorts us, "Rejoice in all things." It's not always easy, but in everything, we can find blessings from God. He loves us and has our best in mind, even when we can't see it. 

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day. 

Scriptures marked CEB are taken from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE (CEB): Scriptures taken from the COMMON ENGLISH BIBLE copyright© 2011, 2012. Used by permission.

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

I don't know about you, but I'm getting a little tired of the pandemic news. I don't think it's so much the news about the pandemic as it is the debate about who is at fault for the predicament we're in economically and physically. Here we sit with unemployment at its highest since the Great Depression. That's understandable with everyone locked in their homes. It's hard to employ workers when businesses have no income because no one can come to their place of business to purchase goods and services. 

So we try to help, and in so doing, put our economy in another tailspin by doubling our national debt with programs that I'm not sure help much. Bailouts that were supposed to provide small businesses funds for wages ran out of money within minutes. A $1,200 check to most adults barely covers groceries for a month these days—and then what? Democrats blame Republicans for delays. Republicans blame Democrats for delays. Neither party seems to recognize the real culprit in all of this drama is a new virus to which no one is immune. So it really doesn't matter what either party says or does, we were in trouble from the start. Every decision was a bad decision. Pandemics are like that. 

We lifted Germany and Singapore as the best models of how to avoid the spread of the virus. The spread appears to have been delayed at best. Their numbers have drastically increased in the last few weeks. So, I'm not sure anyone could do anything about what has happened. At best, we could flatten the curve as governors, and country leaders tried to do in various ways, some more successfully than others perhaps, but none have beat the bug. 

The question I've been asking myself through these bad news stories is, what good can we find in this pandemic? One important thing I've discovered, our priorities changed quickly. Not many ask, "When will I see my football team play again?" Or complain about the dress code at school. Suddenly, those invisible people in factories and hospitals like the janitorial staff become heroes keeping us safe. Teachers and healthcare workers become more important in the eyes of the public than the multimillion-dollar movie stars and sports figures. We find out the researcher behind the microscope is much more important to us than the newscaster in front of the camera. 

In the past, we made gods of the wrong people and the wrong things. In this country, wealth, fame, position, power, became gods to us. We worshipped these without saying so. These became the most valued things in our lives. The pandemic is the great equalizer for all of us, though. Wealth doesn't keep you safe. Nor does fame or position or power. When the virus decides to strike, it will invade and destroy whomever it chooses. 

Paul visited Athens in his missionary journeys and found the same problem there. The Athenians had more visible representations of their gods, but our worship of things other than the true and living God is no different than theirs. Here is what Paul had to say, recorded for us in the Book of Acts:

So Paul took his stand in the open space at the Areopagus and laid it out for them. "It is plain to see that you Athenians take your religion seriously. When I arrived here the other day, I was fascinated with all the shrines I came across. And then I found one inscribed, to the god nobody knows. I'm here to introduce you to this God so you can worship intelligently, know who you're dealing with.

"The God who made the world and everything in it, this Master of sky and land, doesn't live in custom-made shrines or need the human race to run errands for him, as if he couldn't take care of himself. He makes the creatures; the creatures don't make him. Starting from scratch, he made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find him. He doesn't play hide-and-seek with us. He's not remote; he's near. We live and move in him, can't get away from him! One of your poets said it well: 'We're the God-created.' Well, if we are the God-created, it doesn't make a lot of sense to think we could hire a sculptor to chisel a god out of stone for us, does it?

"God overlooks it as long as you don't know any better—but that time is past. The unknown is now known, and he's calling for a radical life-change. He has set a day when the entire human race will be judged and everything set right. And he has already appointed the judge, confirming him before everyone by raising him from the dead." (Acts 17:22-31 TM)

Perhaps in this pandemic, we can take some time to reflect on what is most important in our lives. Before we get back into the mad rush of life and everything opens up to a new normal, maybe we can take inventory of our before COVID life and ask ourselves, on what did I focus my attention? To what did I give my allegiance? What was most important to me if someone watched how I spent my time and my money? Could others see that I genuinely worshipped the God of all creation? Did my behavior show that He is more important to me than everything else in my life? 

It's not too late to figure out God is calling each of us to a radical life change. He wants to renew an intimate relationship with His highest creation. Jesus introduced Him as "Abba," a close, personal term for father, like Daddy. But He also reminds us that Abba is the creator of all things, the Almighty, the Master of the Universe. 

While we are enclosed in our homes, blocked from the rat race that consumed us before COVID, maybe it's time to look for God. He doesn't play hide-and-seek, but He is God and desires us to come to Him understanding who He is—God. When we find Him, when we worship Him, He brings to our hearts an indescribable joy and peace even in the middle of events such as these. Will He remove us from the pandemic? Probably not. We suffer alongside the rest of humanity, but we live with hope, and that's the difference.

What is your god? Better yet, Who is your God? Discover Him while you have some time on your hands. 

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day. 

Scriptures marked TM are taken from the THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH (TM): Scripture taken from THE MESSAGE: THE BIBLE IN CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH, copyright©1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

We find it easy to think God doesn't care when we see the devastation man and nature creates around us. Particularly in these times, when we huddle in our homes, afraid of each other. Afraid our neighbor will spread the virus to us. We live in fear today. What happened? In a few short months, we gave up the outdoors. We gave seeing each other. We gave up our extended families. We even gave up our ability to mourn.

I'm not sure God's desire for us to love each other as He loves us looks favorably on what we have done to ourselves in these last several months. Certainly, we need to take precautions against this new disease about which we seem to know very little. But do we let fear stop our relationships? Do we allow anxiety to be the overwhelming emotion in our lives? 

I think it is time we allow God's rich legacy of peace to take over in our lives and our communities. As His children, we can offer something the rest of the world cannot. We can embrace life with an assurance of hope that a better day is coming. This short time of suffering is not the end, but the beginning of life. No matter what we might face now, it is so insignificant in the face of what we will enjoy with Christ for eternity if we accept Him as the Master of our lives. 

Unfortunately, most people today will not agree with me. As in Jesus' day, most will reject Him. They will call Him a charlatan, a fake, a seeker of fame. That same crowd will declare His followers delusional, gullible, ignorant. But the early followers of Christ held fast for one simple reason. Some five hundred of His disciples saw the physical, resurrected Jesus. Not a ghost or spirit or a delusion, but a physical body. Jesus spoke with them. He ate and walked and touched them. The crucified, once dead, Master overcame the grave and lived. We believe because of the conviction of their belief.

Then Jesus gave those same disciples a mission. The last time they saw Him, He told them to make more disciples and teach them what they knew. Bring them into their fellowship with the rite of baptism in the name of the Triune Godhead, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. More than that, Jesus taught His disciples in His last days before His death, that the Holy Spirit would not just come to live with them as He had, but would live in them.

What difference would that make for them? God longs to have an intimate fellowship with His highest creation, human beings. He made us in His image. He touched the earth to walk with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. 

He touched the earth in the Holy of Holies, the sacred place in the tabernacle He instructed Moses to build for Him as a dwelling place and later in the Temple Solomon made as a place of worship for Israel. It was the spot God came to bring heaven and earth together with His presence. 

Then God lived among us as flesh and blood in human form in His Son Jesus, the second person of the Triune Godhead. How is that possible? He is God, and it is beyond human understanding. If we could understand everything about God, he would not be God, just a super version human. 

While He was here, Jesus said something incredible about that third person of the Godhead, though. He said the Holy Spirit would live in us. Think about that a moment—God in us. 

God touched the earth again—in us. The Holy Spirit, God, lives on earth now, when we accept Him into our lives as the Master of our soul. When we decide to give ourselves to Him, He lives in us just as He lived in the Holy of Holies in the Temple in Jerusalem or the tabernacle as His people moved across the wilderness. We are His temple. 

The Apostle Peter writes to the early church and puts the concept in these words:

Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God's sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. For it stands in scripture: "See, I am laying in Zion a stone, a cornerstone chosen and precious; and whoever believes in him will not be put to shame."

To you then who believe, he is precious; but for those who do not believe, "The stone that the builders rejected has become the very head of the corner," and "A stone that makes them stumble, and a rock that makes them fall." They stumble because they disobey the word, as they were destined to do. But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. (1 Peter 2:4-10 NIV)

We are God's temple when we believe in Jesus for salvation. And when he lives in us, it also makes us a priesthood—every one of us because we are His temple. Think about the responsibility of the caretakers for God's dwelling place; sacrifices, prayers, intercession, care of the temple itself. If I am His temple individually and we are His temple collectively, we have responsibilities to keep ourselves and His church clean and holy, first of all. Then we have a responsibility to minister to those outside this living church; to make disciples and teach them. Jesus commanded us to love each other and love them. He said to make new disciples and teach them. 

How do we do that? We love them into the Kingdom of God. And what better time to do that than now. During every pandemic that has swept the earth, God's people ministered to those in need. It should be the same with this one. Be careful? Absolutely. Be fearful? Never. 

As the psalmist wrote, "Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?" When we know our destiny, the worst that can happen to us is we wake up with Jesus. Let God's love shine through you as you live each day for Him.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day. 

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV): Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™. Used by permission of Zondervan

Join us as we explore God’s ancient wisdom and apply it to our modern lives. His word is as current and relevant today as it was when he inspired its authors more than two and a half millennia ago. The websites where you can reach us are alittlewalkwithgod.com, richardagee.com, or saf.church.

I hope you will join us every week and be sure to let us know how you enjoy the podcast and let others know about it, too. Thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining me today for "A Little Walk with God." I'm your host Richard Agee.

It's hard to believe four months of the year are behind us. Days creep along when faced with the daily grind of the coronavirus restrictions. Or when fighting the disease on the frontlines of hospitals watching patients struggle for life. But here we are with a fourth of the year gone by. Life rushes by at an incredible pace. Before you know it, time is gone. 

During these days, I am trying to be a little more mindful of things going on around me. Couples walking around the block that didn't have time to do so before. Kids riding bicycles that have laid idle in garages in the past. Friends and neighbors spending time talking across the yard to each other when before this crisis began, there seemed to be little time for any of these activities. 

I've also tried to filter the news to which I pay attention. Most of the reports give us the number of sick and dead around the world or in our country. They tell us the worst-case scenarios we can expect with the disease and our economy in the months ahead. It's all the same. Look for, here's the dreaded word, "unprecedented" events in the coming months. 

I've come to really dislike the word. We misuse it. It's not true of this plague. Many alive today never experienced anything like it, but it certainly isn't unprecedented. Ask anyone who survived the "Great Depression." We are nowhere close to that stage in this country yet. If you could resurrect those who lived during the "Black Death" that swept through Europe in the middle ages, they would laugh at us. Between 25 and 50 percent of the population died then. Even the 1918 Spanish Flu took 25 million of us. 

We cannot call this unprecedented. We can call it a pandemic. We can call it a disaster. We can call us unprepared. We can say a lot of things about it, but we should stop using the word unprecedented. It's not. 

What is also not unprecedented, but rare are the acts of kindness I'm beginning to see around us. Rather than hoarding, I'm starting to see neighbors making grocery runs for neighbors who are at higher risk of severe symptoms if they acquire the virus. I'm seeing those neighborly actions that were so common in the 1950s and 1960s. I'm seeing people talking to each other with real words instead of through mechanical devices. People are beginning to understand that the entertainment industry and sports world might not be the most essential segments of society. Maybe teachers and health professionals and first responders and janitors play a much more indispensable role than we have given them credit over the last few decades. 

Maybe we can begin to charge our federal officeholders to become statemen instead of politicians in the future. We have watched enough of their party politics result in tremendous human suffering. It's time we stop their petty scramble for reelection and keep the good of the people in mind. 

But frankly, governments will never take care of people well. They never have. Rome created one of the best welfare systems for their Roman citizens. It eventually failed. The state couldn't afford it, even with their world-wide conquests and burdensome taxation. So how were people cared for? The fringe was the concern of Jesus. He ministered to outcasts by the governments and religious organizations. So did those who followed his example after his resurrection. We read about them in the second letter Luke wrote to Theophilus concerning the acts of the early followers of Jesus. We call the letter the Book of Acts. Luke writes:

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42-47 NIV)

More people became followers of this new way of life because they saw the joy and peace that radiated from those who ministered to them. They saw something different in these Christians. Even though the Romans and the Jewish leaders sought to destroy them, they didn't fear death or suffering at the hands of these leaders. They exuded peace in the face of death that could not be explained by ordinary means. It was the presence of the living God in their lives that made the difference. And it was this same presence of God that caused them to joyfully share what little they had with others to ensure all had enough to survive the onslaught of the persecution they faced. 

Generosity in the face of poverty. Gladness in the face of persecution. Hope where others thought there should only exist hopelessness in their situation. These are the traits of the early Christians that drew men and women into their fold, adding to the church day by day. Their demonstrated love brought people to them and the church, nothing more and nothing less. 

So here we are in the middle of this pandemic. Some states and cities relaxed their shelter at home orders freeing us to move about with certain precautions. The pandemic isn't over. We will have a second wave in the next few months. More will become sick, and many will die before we see the end of this disease. 

As Christians, we have an opportunity to extend God's love during this time. We can act like the Apostles in the early church and be mindful of the needs of those around us. We can praise God and have the goodwill of the people because of the genuine love we have for those around us demonstrated by our actions. Let's be the living body of Christ that he intended us to be in this crucial time. 

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible-based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn't, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day. 

Scriptures marked NIV are taken from the NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION (NIV): Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION ®. Copyright© 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™. Used by permission of Zondervan