Jesus said that the goal of every disciple is to bear much fruit. If we bear none, the vinedresser will remove us (John 15:2). If we bear some, He will prune us. The measure of our success as Jesus’ disciples lies in our fruitfulness. That is why being in a spiritual wilderness is so frustrating. Wildernesses are dry, barren, and bleak. Little grows there. It can seem the antithesis of fruitfulness. Yet it seems that everyone, at some point in their life, finds themselves in a spiritual desert. Some of the greatest leaders in the Bible spent prolonged periods in the wilderness. Elijah was there more than once (1 Kings 17:3; 19:3-4). Abraham yielded the lush plains to his nephew Lot while he dwelt in the desert (Genesis 13:10-13; 18). David, Moses, John the Baptist, and Jesus all spent significant periods of time in the wilderness. It would seem that in some way, the path to their greatness led straight through a wilderness. Elijah provides an interesting case study. The first time we meet him, he is boldly delivering a word from God to the evil king Ahab. No water would fall on Israel. This was devastating news to a king whose land depended on rainfall for its survival. But for the intervention of God, Elijah might never have escaped the royal palace with his life. In fact, God told His faithful servant to escape and hide by the Brook Cherith. Scholars are unsure exactly where that brook was. It may not have been in a desert, but it was in an isolated, barren place. The prophet’s only food was take out, delivered twice daily by ravens. Eventually the water from the brook dried up completely. It became a barren, uninhabitable land. But it was exactly where God told Elijah to be. That’s right. Elijah was perfectly faithful, yet God dispatched him to a wilderness. Sometimes we can be in the center of God’s will and be in a wilderness. Conversely, three years later, Elijah won his greatest victory when he prayed down fire from heaven on Mount Carmel and defeated 850 prophets of Baal and Asherah. But then things went south. Queen Jezebel uttered dire threats to the lone prophet of God and he was uncharacteristically struck by fear. He ran for his life into the wilderness. Elijah dismissed his servant and travelled for 40 days until he ensconced himself in a cave on Mount Sinai. It was there that God found him and asked the penetrating question: “What are you doing here, Elijah?” This time Elijah was in a wilderness of his own choosing. God had not called him to the desert. God’s last instruction was to stand atop a mountain and win a glorious victory. Elijah chose a desert out of a lack of faith in God. Elijah experienced two wilderness experiences in his life, one as a result of obeying God’s will, the other as a result of fleeing God’s will. In each case, God met him there and transformed his life. Elijah never left a wilderness the same way he entered it. A wilderness is a solitary place. It is often quiet there, with few, if any distractions. While it can be lonely, it also allows us to focus, and to pray. It gives us perspective. It can be a place to indulge in a pity party or it can be a venue that solidifies our soul. You may currently be residing in a spiritual wilderness. Perhaps God assigned that place to you, or maybe you are there out of your own failure of faith. Regardless, God is a master at using a wilderness to the greatest effect. It is an awesome thing to be alone with God. Use that time well. Listen for His still, small, voice. No one else may know where you are, but God does. What may seem like your worst moment may in actual fact be a watershed moment in your life when God does something that changes your life forever. Embrace the wilderness of your life. www.blakaby.net . Used by permission.

According to researchers, the vast majority–a whopping 75-98 percent–of the illnesses that plague us today are a direct result of our thought life. What we think about truly affects us both physically and emotionally. In fact, fear alone triggers more than 1,400 known physical and chemical responses in our bodies, activating more than thirty different hormones! Today our culture is undergoing an epidemic of toxic thoughts that, left unchecked, create ideal conditions for illnesses. Remove bad thoughts and wire in new ones (Lamentations 3:23). This is called neurogenesis. You have been designed for deep, intellectual thought (Psalm 139:4). You are wired for love, and fear is a learned and not a natural response. (2 Timothy 1:7). You have the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). You are made in God’s image. (Genesis 1:27). All of this knowledge will help you realize these truths: Happiness comes from within and success follows-not the other way around. You can learn how to learn and deepen your intellect. You can overcome learning issues. You can get the chaos in your mind under control. You don’t have to walk around in guilt and condemnation. If you wired those toxic thoughts in, you can wire them out. You don’t have to get stuck in bad habits; you can change them. You can overcome feelings of rejection and hurt. Forgiveness is not the battle that you think it is. You don’t have to worry about things that are out of your control. You are not a victim of the things you shouldn’t be doing. You don’t have to fear that if a condition runs in your family that you are going to get it (for example, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or depression). You can balance your over-thinking and over-analyzing mind. You can overcome and control depression and anxiety—some scientists re showing You can even control and overcome schizophrenia and OCD. You don’ have to keep digging into the past to get free from it. You can be happy and filled with peace regardless of your circumstances. Summary of: SWITCH ON YOUR BRAIN: THE KEY TO PEAK HAPPINESS, THINKING AND HEALTH. Order from Amazon today! Used by permission of the author.

Understanding the distinctive characteristics of your offspring because of their birth order can dramatically affect your parenting. Here is a concise description of unique birth order qualities. I hope you will see your children in a new way. First Born Newscasters and TV talk show hosts tend to be first born or only children. Prominent examples include: Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, Ted Koppel, Oprah, Donahue, Geraldo, Arsenio Hall and Rush Limbaugh. Over half of U.S presidents were firstborns. Clearly, firstborns are natural leaders. They also tend to be reliable, conscientious and perfectionists who don’t like surprises. Although, firstborns are typically aggressive, many are also compliant people pleasers. They are model children who have a strong need for approval from anyone in charge. Only Children Only children are firstborns in triplicate. They are even more responsible and even bigger perfectionists. They usually get along better with people older than themselves. Middle Child These kids are the most difficult to pin down. They are guaranteed to be opposite of their older sibling, but that difference can manifest in a variety of ways. Middle children often feel like their older brother gets all the glory while their younger sister escapes all discipline. Because the middle child feels that the world pays him less attention, he tends to be secretive; he does not openly share his thoughts or feelings. Middle children may not feel they have a special place in the family so friends and peer groups become much more important. They can usually read people well, they are peacemakers who see all sides of a situation, they are independent and inventive. If a firstborn is a company’s CEO, the middle child is the entrepreneur. Last Born Babies of the family are social and outgoing, they are the most financially irresponsible of all birth orders. They just want to have a good time. Knowing that these kids love the limelight, it’s no surprise to discover that Billy Crystal, Goldie Hawn, Drew Carey, Jim Carey and Steve Martin are all lastborns. While lastborns may be charming, they also have the potential to be manipulative, spoiled or babied to the point of helplessness. The last born is the one who will probably still have a pet name although he’s 29 and has a masters degree. Exceptions? Some variables can affect the above descriptions. For instance, if there are several years between the first and second child, the second child will have some characteristics of a firstborn. Or, if the firstborn is a girl and the second a boy, the son will have some first-born characteristics because he is the family’s first male offspring. Sibling deaths, adoptions and blended families can also upset the traditional birth order. Children are all different and have to be parented in different ways. You need to parent kids differently depending on their birth order. Parenting The First Born Don’t Be an Improver: Your child already feels the need to be perfect in every way. “Improving” tasks your firstborn attempts on her own will only increase the pressure she places on herself. For instance, let’s say you ask your oldest son to make his bed. Being a firstborn he will, of course, seek your approval and want you to see the finished task. If you tell him it looks good but then proceed to fluff the pillow and straighten out wrinkles in the bedspread, you send the message that he could have done better. Take Two-On–One Time: “Firstborns respond better to adult company than children of any other birth order. Firstborns often feel that parents don’t pay much attention to them because they’re always concentrating on the younger ones in the family. Make a special effort to have the first born join you and your spouse in going out alone for a treat, or to run some kind of special errand. Don’t Pile On Responsibilities: Older children often feel as though they do much more work around the house than their younger siblings. Share the duties and errands as soon as young children are capable. And, stay away from making your first born the family’s instant baby sitter. Check with his schedule, just as you would an outside babysitter. Parenting The Middle Child Make Time To Listen: Remember that middle children tend to avoid sharing how they really feel. Although it’s important to set aside time to talk to all of your children, it’s particularly important to make this happen with the middle child because he is least likely to insist on his fair share of time. Allow Child to Make Decisions: Empower your middle child and make him feel special by allowing him to make choices such as who gets to bowl first or what the family will eat for dessert. This will help alleviate feelings of always being overshadowed by older and younger siblings. Update the Family Album: This may sound silly but it truly is important. There tend to be a billion photos of the firstborn and about six of the next child. To a child flipping through the family album, this is a sure sign that he’s not loved as much. Be sure to have photos of the middle child alone, not always paired with the older sibling. Parenting The Last Born Stick to the Rules: The saying “he gets away with murder” is based in reality. Statistics show the lastborn is least likely to be disciplined and the least likely to have to toe the mark the way the older children did. You can be sure your older children are watching you closely! Hand Out Responsibility: Lastborns often wind up with less to do around the house for two reasons. One, they are pros at ducking out of work. And two, they are so little and “helpless” that the rest of the family decides it’s easier to do the work themselves. You want to raise a confident, self-reliant child so don’t promote this helpless image. Applaud Accomplishments: Lastborns are well known for feeling that nothing they do is important. Make a big deal out of accomplishments (you may have seen two other kids learn to ride a bike but it’s the first time for your baby) and be sure he gets his fair share of “marquee time” on the refrigerator. Parents’ Birth Order We’ve been discussing children’s birth orders, but it’s important to realize that parenting style is also influenced by the parent’s own birth order. Parents subconsciously identify with the child who holds the spot in the family they occupied themselves. A lastborn dad might think his youngest antics are cute while mom sees them as irresponsible. Also, firstborns are perfectionists their whole lives. As parents, they may set standards that are difficult for a child to reach. This makes them frustrated and their children unhappy. Find the valuable resources Kevin Leman offers at www.drleman.com/store/.

Maybe this is your journey. Here’s the scene: You’re in a battle with sickness, oppression or some similar need. However, you seek God and, in some way, the grace of God touches your life. Your victory may have come through God’s Word or prayer or some other encouragement, but you absolutely know the Lord delivered you. Using the five smooth stones of divine grace, you defeated your Goliath. But then, a few weeks or months later (or perhaps, years), suddenly all the old symptoms return with a vengeance. If you were struggling with an illness, it manifests now worse than ever; if your battle was regarding a relationship, it seems like all progress has been lost and you are back to square one. Have you ever been there? These negative experiences can drain the faith from your heart to such a degree that you feel you’ll never recover the anticipation of faith again. A spiritual paralysis immobilizes your soul. You may still attend church, but your faith is unresponsive; when others testify of a healing or deliverance, you secretly wait, measuring the time until they, too, lose their healing. For many, the result is one of severe disillusionment. The scripture says, “Hope deferred makes the heart sick” (Prov 13:12). How can you trust God when it seems like He let you down? You wonder: Did I lose my breakthrough or was I only deceiving myself and never really had it? But it is very possible that what you are experiencing is an entirely new spiritual battle, not a loss of God’s blessing. This new war is a very clever and effective deception that Satan uses to try and worm his way back into the lives of those delivered by God. I had been praying about this very thing, this returning battle, when the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart, “Goliath had a brother.” I was immediately reminded of David’s war against the Philistine giant. We all know that David became a great hero by trusting God and defeating Goliath. However, later in his life other giants showed up to war against the Lord’s servant. Amazingly, all of them were related to Goliath! Three of these giants were Goliath’s actual children; one, was Goliath’s brother (See 1 Chr 20.). So, after defeating a giant once, David suddenly had to face another giant. Get this point: Goliath had a brother that looked like him. We can imagine that the giant talked like Goliath, fought like him, and probably even smelled like him. Other than saying David was weary, the Bible is silent as to what might have been going through the king’s mind. Perhaps he wondered, “I thought I killed you. What are you doing back?” But, Goliath hadn’t come back. It was the giant’s brother and children that returned; it just looked like the same battle! The truth was, Goliath was dead. Likewise, you also have had many successful victories. JUST BECAUSE THE CURRENT GIANT YOU ARE FACING LOOKS LIKE ONE YOU DEFEATED IN THE PAST, DON’T BUY THE LIE THAT YOU NEVER REALLY WON THE FIRST BATTLE! By the strength of God’s grace, you trusted the Almighty and conquered your Goliath. The first giant is dead. Satan is masquerading as your former enemy so he can slip past your faith and regain entrance into your life. Resist him. Stand in faith (Eph 6). Don’t accept the lie that you were never delivered. The victory that overcomes the world is our faith (1 John 5:4). The Living God who helped you conquer Goliath will empower you to overcome his brother as well. Father, I bring to You Your servants. Lord, some have fought battles that seem to have reoccurred. Like David, they have become weary with fighting this enemy. By the power of Your Holy Spirit, I expose the lie that they had not previously conquered this enemy. In Jesus’ name, I rebuke the enemy. I ask You Lord to send angels to strengthen supernaturally Your people, just as angels often strengthened Jesus. In the name of the Lord. Amen! www.frangipane.org

Is she a collection of body parts? Is she made of plastic? Or is she a whole person with a soul, full of all the things that make a person human: strengths, weaknesses, quirks, fears, insecurities, anxieties, vulnerabilities, likes, dislikes, hopes, and dreams? The answer is obvious, yet it escapes so many men lost in our sex-and-skin-saturated culture. Whether by conscious choice or by years of overexposure that has conditioned an addiction, many men view women as objects to be consumed. This trap is so easy to fall in to, most men don’t even realize they are doing it. I know for most of my life, I didn’t. If you allowed yourself to be raised on soft-core pornography the way I did, your mind and body define attractiveness as body parts. You give a woman her worth based on her body parts and not much else. This is just as true for woman you see on a page or a screen as it is for women you see in real life. It’s easy to stare at a photo or movie of a nude woman and create the perfect fantasy with her. You know nothing else about her! The reality is, she’d likely have zero interest in you in real life and you likely would be quite turned off by a variety of things about her as well. But it’s not real life. It’s fantasy. But where do you live? You live in real life, not in fantasy. We all live in real life. So what happens when the way we view women is completely formed in fantasy then we get up from the computer to interact with women in real life? Problems ensue, and ensue quickly. The Stakes If you’re married, these ensuing problems are obvious. If there’s one thing marriage does, it shows the full humanity of a woman and the full humanity of a man. There’s a reason our marriage vows say “for better or worse” in them: marriage is guaranteed to bring with it the best sides of a person, as well as the worst. There is no hiding in marriage—which is the exact opposite of pornography and lust. So as a man, you know all of your wife’s flaws, you smell her breath in the morning, and you see her when she’s tired, stressed out, and without makeup. You see none of these things in pornography—or in the attractive woman you think is flirting with you at the receptionist counter. Fantasy then takes over and you assume this woman has none of these human imperfections. As fantasy crashes headfirst into reality, logical thought goes out the window and obsession and longing ensue—a recipe for disaster in a marriage. But the stakes aren’t any less if you’re single. Many single guys feel they have a license to lust since they aren’t married, as it doesn’t seem like they are harming anyone else. The sobering remedy to this line of thought is simple: if you’re conditioned to view women as objects meant for your consumption, how do you view my wife when she walks in the room? How do you view my daughters? What thoughts go through your head? Where do your eyes go? Exactly. If you are single and you feel this gives you the license to lust, please stay far away from me and my family. This mindset makes you an incredibly unsafe person to be around. As Christians, we are called to be in trusting, dignity-giving community with one another. The only way to do this is to be serious about the damage our pattern of objectifying women does to everyone around us. The Solution The solution to a mindset of objectification is to allow God to rewire the way our brains process the women we interact with. We obviously need to completely cut off the pornography as the “professor” who wired us to turn women into pieces of meat like this in the first place. But beyond the elimination of this force, we need to allow God’s healing and corrective touch to rebuild the way we were designed to view women. Every woman you lust over is someone’s daughter. Would you want someone lusting over your daughter the way you lust over women? Obviously not—because you view your daughter as a whole person, not as a collection of body parts. All of us, men and women, are created in God’s image (Genesis 1:27). This is full humanity. God tells us that the very definition of sex is two of these full humans coming together as one flesh (Genesis 2:24). Anything less that the full merger of these two humans falls short of God’s design for sex. “Full” meaning all of someone: the good and the bad, and definitely not just their body parts. The reality is sex is not about body parts. It’s about trust, safety and commitment—things that are completely foreign to lust. God did not create women to be consumed, nor did he create you to consume them. So next time you see a cute girl, don’t dehumanize her by placing her sole value on her physical appearance. And don’t let lust dehumanize you by turning you into this kind of consuming monster. Sex and lust make lousy gods. Ask the only God with any real power to heal you and put you on the path to loving all of his image-bearing children the way he loves you, and the way he loves your daughters. www.covenanteyes.com . Guest author Noah Filipiak.

There are times when we the best of our logic fails to understand the worst of other’s behaviors. It’s part of the oddity or maybe complexity of the human psyche that we sometimes make choices that defy any shred of reason or seem void of even the slightest hint of sensibility. More times than we can count we stand in awe of the choices that some people make, standing at some distance shaking our heads in disoriented disbelief and wondering what in the world they were thinking. Sometimes our own choices are perplexingly confusing, defying our own logic and leaving us patently bewildered and entirely befuddled at who we are and what we just did. Clearly, we can be our greatest puzzle and most mysterious mystery. Yet, the most inexplicably confounding situations are those when these rather irrational decisions are made at the expense of others. Sure, we can make wildly poor choices that effect ourselves in ways slight or significant. I suppose it’s within our rights to chart spurious courses that descend to dark places as long as the only person that ends up in those dark places with us is ‘us.’ It would seem that we can “shoot ourselves in the foot” as long as it’s our foot and no one else’s. Yet, far too frequently we shoot a lot of other’s feet other than our own. And so the pressing and rather incendiary question becomes, why would we take someone else down with us? What in the world behooves us to make choices that reach out with arms either long or short, grab someone else in whatever way we do that and drag them down? Why is it that we just can’t leave others alone? To the contrary, we find ourselves incessantly goaded by some potent force that’s sufficiently compelling to override any sense of responsibility and silence any voice of morality to the point that we pull others in and push them down with issues that aren’t even theirs? What compels us to make choices that are certain to seize the course of the life of another and set their path on some dizzying descent? Self-Preservation When life presses us with an unnerving intensity we are reflexively prone to revert to defensive position of self-preservation. Sure, it’s quite easy to be graciously gracious and heroically selfless when the cost of doing so isn’t all that significant. We can look quite the part when we don’t have a lot of skin in the game or when we know that we’re not likely to be skinned while we’re in the game. We live within limits that are long on self and short on others, so it doesn’t take long before we take the shortest route to the closest place of safety. If we ruthlessly strip away all the pleasantries and pretenses that we gaudily wrap ourselves in we will find that self-preservation lays seated underneath it all as the irreparably non-negotiable objective that is so core to the base side of ourselves that we will instinctively sacrifice others to insure it. Therefore, as the cost/benefit analysis swings away from us we’re more likely to gradually or not so gradually swing the cost over onto others. We’re noble, but noble to a point. We’re generous, but only to the degree that what we’re getting sufficiently offsets what we’re giving. We will extend ourselves in ways that appear magnanimous and philanthropic as long as we don’t have to extend ourselves beyond arm’s reach of ourselves. And these points where we pull up and stop are most often based on our tolerance for sacrifice and the degree to which we’re willing to absorb pain. There comes a point where the responsibility of accountability is just a bit too revealing, where the selflessness of putting ourselves aside is pinching our egos a bit too hard, and where the concept of sacrifice and the ‘good of our fellowman’ hasn’t given us all that much in return, if it’s given us anything at all. Our Expectations When the world around us doesn’t reciprocate our simple acts of simply being a ‘good person’ in the manner in which we feel it should, we begin to become toxically jaded and we take a darker turn into ourselves. When the world is perceived by us as intrinsically greedy, when it seems that every action is driven by a darkly covert agenda, and when the rampant selfishness appears wholly unrepentant and entirely irreparable we pull inward and we put up impenetrable walls. And in putting up the walls we would be quite wise to ask if the things that we find so aberrant and awful are indeed the very things we ourselves engage in. It may well be that our own greed is worse than those that we condemn because we too often demand that we dictate what we give to those around us, we demand how the they will respond to what we have given them, all the while condemning the world of the very offenses that we ourselves are equally guilty of. If we are not aware of such caustic distortions, we will make it about us. And in making it about us we’re foolishly led to believe that all of our many cherished expenditures are never expended because they never move outside of us. It’s all about us investing all of ‘us’ back into all of ‘us.’ This self-sabotaging, self-absorbing cycle creates an ever-hardening pattern where the deepening pain that we are inflicting on others and the manner in which we are blithely diminishing their lives begins to go entirely unnoticed. Often we are on the receiving end of such behaviors, and sometimes we’re the ones dishing them out. We’d be keenly wise to recognize it in others so that we can more prudently deal with the behaviors as we cope with the impact of them. But, we’d be ever wiser to recognize such behaviors in ourselves. We Are Too Expensive When we make it about us, someone, somewhere is going to go down simply because the cost of being about ‘us’ is a cost that will always extend itself beyond ‘us.’ We don’t have the life currency to make it about us, so we borrow or steal that ‘currency’ from other places and other people. Despite our frequently supercilious arguments to the contrary, we simply do not have the inherent capacity to generate everything that we need. However astounding we might perceive it to be, our capacity to independently generate resources will perpetually fall short of the resources that we actually need. Therefore, as our accumulated needs swiftly exhaust our scant resources we are forced by our limitations to reach outside of ourselves to obtain those resources. And in either borrowing or stealing those resources from someone else, that ‘someone’ is going down as we attempt to push ourselves up. Need We Dare Remember We’ve regularly failed to realize that being a good person pays exceedingly generous dividends far beyond anything we can borrow or steal. Riches born of sacrifice fill the coffers of heaven. Yet we miss those dividends because they’re not exactly the ones that we’re looking for, or they’ve come at some cost when we’d much prefer to receive them free of charge. Often the riches generated are held until time or attitude would render the delivery of them as far more meaningful for us, yet delayed gratification feels much the same as no gratification. And so, cynicism wins the day, pessimism reigns and we’re going to take others down with us without even recognizing that we’re doing so. It’s quite sad enough that we do things to take ourselves down and shoot ourselves in the foot. Yet, it’s infinitely more tragic that we do that to others. We cannot control the actions of others as they perpetrate such behaviors upon us. Yet, we can control ourselves. So to avoid taking others down we’d be wise to look at the state of our heart, take the temperature of our attitude, and see if our soul is still breathing because we may find that they are all in some state that we’d much prefer them not to be. And once we’ve inventories them alive again, maybe we’ll realize that to sacrifice is to fill the coffers of heaven which will spill over into the vault of our soul. When that happens we have no need to push others down because we, by virtue of our sacrifices, have pushed ourselves up without stepping on anyone in order to do it. © 2015 Craig Lounsbrough, M.Div., Licensed Professional Counselor

There’s been much hand-wringing over ISIS’s success in recruiting young men from the West to join their holy war. Contrary to the stereotype of the poor, disadvantaged youth acting out his rage by joining a jihad, many of ISIS’s male recruits hail from middle class homes in prosperous communities. Why would these men exchange safe, comfortable lives to fight for a bloody death cult? Even more disturbing – some ISIS fighters grew up practicing the Christian faith. Many are African-American, and attended church regularly as boys. Among these men is Douglas McArthur McCain, one of the dozens of native-born American and European men who have joined various jihadi groups. In 2014, McCain became the first U.S. citizen killed fighting for the Islamic State. McCain was an American-born Midwesterner. He was a 33-year-old father, a rapper and a caregiver to special needs patients. McCain was raised in church. His mother attended faithfully. McCain was said to be a practicing Christian prior to his conversion to Islam several years ago. Why did McCain choose the mosque over the church? He’s dead, so we can’t ask him. But I’m guessing his church experience had something to do with it. Assuming McCain grew up in a typical African-American church, here’s what his weekly worship experience would have been like: Up to 75% of adult worshippers are female. The service lasts approximately 3 hours. The sermon lasts approximately 90 minutes (or more). Worship services are highly emotive. Worshippers cry out regularly during the sermon. Décor features quilts, banners and flowers. Lots of flowers. The sanctuary is outfitted like a theater, with a stage, lighting, sound equipment, podium and pews. Worshippers are expected to “dress for church.” The offering plate comes by several times until sufficient money is raised. The Sunday school system emphasizes reading, sitting still and memorizing. His mother is the spiritual leader in the home. Compare this to the mosque. As a Muslim, McCain’s worship experience would have been completely different: 100% of adult worshippers are male (women are not required to attend, and do not worship alongside men). Friday prayers last less than an hour. The sermon is divided into two parts and lasts just a few minutes. Islamic worship is devoid of emotion. Worshippers must remain totally silent during the sermon. Most mosques are sparsely decorated with high ceilings and carpeted floors (to accommodate kneeling) Worship spaces are simple and spacious. There are no chairs. No stage. No band. Little artificial lighting. Worshippers are expected to wear clean clothes. They worship barefoot. There is no offering plate. Alms may be given before or after prayers. Worship is a full-body experience; a quasi-military exercise featuring standing, kneeling, bowing, etc. Men line themselves up in ranks as if preparing for war. Women (with few exceptions) are not allowed to lead men in prayers. Now, which worship experience seems better suited to young men? Which suggests battle preparation — and which suggests a stage presentation? One time I pointed these differences out at an event for African-American men. One man tried to explain to me why black churches worship the way they do: “When we were slaves, Sunday was our only day off. We put on our best clothing and spent all day at church. That’s why we have long services. It’s our culture.” He continued: “We weren’t allowed to be educated, so Sunday school taught us to read. We had no voice in society, so we expressed our emotion and anguish in worship and song. And church was the one place we could meet socially, talk politics and organize for a better life. So we needed a stage and pastors who were gifted orators.” OK, I get this. Given our nation’s appalling history of black oppression, it’s not hard to understand why African-American churches have evolved the way they have. And there’s nothing improper about a three-hour worship service, a 90-minute sermon or a sanctuary filled primarily with ladies in hats and gloves. But when you compare this to Islam, it’s easy to see why significant numbers of young African-American men, desperate for a masculine worship environment, might reject church and find a home in the mosque. And a few find their way into ISIS. How do we put a stop to this? One of the best ways to fight Islamic extremism is to provide a robust competitor. Christianity is the obvious alternative. Significant numbers of Muslims are reportedly coming to Christ in the Middle East – even in countries where it’s illegal to follow “the Nazarene.” Secularists who are waiting for religion to disappear may be waiting a long, long time. Religion is not going to go away. In fact, evidence suggests the world is becoming more religious – not less. Men will always pursue God. The only question: will they seek a God of love and peace — or a God of hatred and violence? I believe a strong, assertive Christianity will be the most effective bulwark against jihadism. Our worship services must reflect the militant aspects of our faith. Men must understand that Christianity is not just a stage show – it’s a dangerous faith that demands our total allegiance. How can we strengthen churches to them more appealing to young men of color? Here are six suggestions: Restore battle imagery to worship. In response to the Vietnam War, many churches stripped their hymnals and liturgy of any metaphor of war or conflict. This was an enormous mistake. Battle imagery does not make men violent – it galvanizes their resolve. Redecorate. If a church looks like a grandma place, then young men will avoid it. Decorate your worship space according to the tastes of young men, not old ladies. Relax dress codes . Men enjoy dressing informally, so let them. Men-only events. Men need opportunities to gather and disciple one another – without women in the room. Shorten worship services. It’s 2015. People have things to do. If a black church advertised a one-hour worship service, you wouldn’t be able to keep men away. Give young men a meaningful role. Older Christians need to hand ministry over – and give young men a meaningful place in the church. I have been working with a black church that has done all these things. In just five years the congregation has nearly tripled in size by focusing on men. And the number of active men has increased fivefold. In my next post I’ll share an interview with the pastor of this church. www.churchformen.com . Used by permission. To read the original article, click here.

This article was authored by Ben Driver, a guest contributor to Covenant Eyes. When dealing with porn we need to look at the big picture and the little picture. We need to fight the small battles in order to win the war. Over the years I’ve become convinced that to win to war of lust we need to learn to live out the greatest and most important commandment of Christ: love. When we love God and love others we begin to win the war. Love conquers lust. Porn teaches us a distorted view of love, intimacy, other people, and even God. Love teaches us to value our neighbors; porn teaches us to objectify them. Love teaches us to serve others; porn teaches us that others exist to serve us. Love teaches us that nothing matters more then knowing God; porn teaches us that nothing matters more then immediate temporary pleasure. When we choose to love God and others, we choose to war against lust. But how do we fight in the daily battles? I believe this begins with love as well. Consider the concept of love as an acronym. We must fight with L.O.V.E. L – Leave your sin. If we ever want to see lust defeated in our lives, we must make the choice to leave our sin behind. Jesus often told people “Go, and sin no more.” Jesus calls us to the same. Have you made the choice to leave your sin? We must make the choice to leave our sin every time the temptation strikes. The Bible tells us to flee from sexual immorality. Just like Joseph ran from Potiphar’s wife, we must run from our own temptations. Sometimes this means getting ourselves far from temptation before it even happens. Things like limiting your Internet access and Internet filtering are helpful tools here. Sometimes this means physically leaving when temptation strikes. Go do something else. Ride your bike, cook a meal, call a friend, clean your house, just do something to leave the temptation. Leaving your sin is the first step to winning the battle. O – Open yourself up to others. Accountability is all about being open with others. It’s about following the Biblical commands to confess your sins and your struggles. Do you have someone who you can be honest with? If not, find someone. Just as we need to love our neighbors as ourselves, we need someone to love us enough to hold us accountable. In the moment of temptation, one of the best things you can do is open up to someone else about your struggle. Hebrews 3:12-13 says, “Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” In other words, one of the key ways we fight sin is by hearing the encouragement and exhortation of another. You need someone in your life to love you and to make sure you do not become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin thrives in the darkness so expose it to the light of love. The battle will never be one alone. V – Value the right things. What do you really value? Porn teaches us to value temporary pleasure. The pleasure of porn only lasts as long as the time spent viewing it. God offers something better and He invites us to value the right things. In Matthew 5:29, Jesus commands us to value our eternity even more then our physical bodies. He says, “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell.” Do you value freedom from this sin? We must make the choice to value the things of God. E – Engage with God. Jesus simply says in Matthew 5:8, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” The more we “see God” the more pure we become, and vice versa. The cycle of porn is one of shame and more impurity. The cycle of engaging with God is one of love and purity. Have you been engaging with God lately? To win the battles we must engage with God. Make the choice to love. Win the war by fighting the battles. The amazing truth of God’s word is that God loves us even in spite of our sin. If we strive to love Him and others I’m convinced that the chains of lust will be broken. Let’s defeat lust with love! ---------- Ben Driver, guest author, is the minister for the Bellevue Church of Christ in Bellevue, Ohio. He is passionate about Christians fulfilling the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. He cares deeply about the issue of pornography and wants to help others find freedom through Christ.

The Holy Spirit has an amazing ministry in the life of the believer. You should know exactly how He blesses your life. 1. He convicts the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment (John 16:8). 2. He guides us into all truth (John 16:13). 3. He regenerates us (John 3:5-8; Titus 3:5). 4. He glorifies and testifies of Christ (John 15:26; 16:14). 5. He reveals Christ to us and in us (John 16:14-15). 6. He leads us (Rom. 8:14; Gal. 5:18; Matt. 4:1; Luke 4:1). 7. He sanctifies us (2 Thess. 2:13; 1 Pet. 1:2; Rom. 5:16). 8. He empowers us (Luke 4:14; 24:49; Rom. 15:19; Acts 1:8). 9. He fills us (Eph. 5:18; Acts 2:4; 4:8, 31; 9:17). 10. He teaches us to pray (Rom. 8:26-27; Jude 1:20). 11. He bears witness in us that we are children of God (Rom. 8:16). 12. He produces in us the fruit or evidence of His work and presence (Gal. 5:22-23). 13. He distributes spiritual gifts and manifestations (the outshining) of His presence to and through the body (1 Cor. 12:4, 8-10; Heb. 2:4). 14. He anoints us for ministry (Luke 4:18; Acts 10:38). 15. He washes and renews us (Titus 3:5). 16. He brings unity and oneness to the body (Eph. 4:3; 2:14-18). Here He plays the same role that He plays in the Godhead. The Spirit is the life that unites Father and Son. He plays the same role in the church. When He is operating in a group of people, He unites them in love. 17. He is our guarantee and deposit of the future resurrection (2 Cor. 1:22; 2 Cor. 5:5). 18. He seals us unto the day of redemption (Eph. 1:13; 4:30). 19. He sets us free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:2). 20. He quickens our mortal bodies (Rom. 8:11). 21. He reveals the deep things of God to us (1 Cor. 2:10). 22. He reveals what has been given to us from God (1 Cor. 2:12). 23. He dwells in us (Rom. 8:9; 1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Tim. 1:14; John 14:17). 24. He speaks to, in, and through us (1 Cor. 12:3; 1 Tim. 4:1; Rev. 2:11; Heb 3:7; Matt. 10:20; Acts 2:4; 8:29; 10:19; 11:12, 28; 13:2; 16:6,7; 21:4,11). 25. He is the agent by which we are baptized into the body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). 26. He brings liberty (2 Cor. 3:17). 27. He transforms us into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). 28. He cries in our hearts, “Abba, Father” (Gal. 4:6). 29. He enables us to wait (Gal. 5:5). 30. He supplies us with Christ (Phil. 1:19, KJV). 31. He grants everlasting life (Gal. 6:8). 32. He gives us access to God the Father (Eph. 2:18). 33. He makes us (corporately) God’s habitation (Eph. 2:22). 34. He reveals the mystery of God to us (Eph. 3:5). 35. He strengthens our spirits (Eph. 3:16). 36. He enables us to obey the truth (1 Pet. 1:22). 37. He enables us to know that Jesus abides in us (1 John 3:24; 4:13). 38. He confesses that Jesus came in the flesh (1 John 4:2). 39. He says “Come, Lord Jesus” along with the bride (Rev. 22:17). 40. He dispenses God’s love into our hearts (Rom. 5:5). 41. He bears witness to the truth in our conscience (Rom. 9:1). 42. He teaches us (1 Cor. 2:13; John 14:26). 43. He gives us joy (1 Thess. 1:6). 44. He enables some to preach the gospel (1 Pet. 1:12). 45. He moves us (2 Pet. 1:21). 46. He knows the things of God (1 Cor. 2:11). 47. He casts out demons (Matt. 12:28). 48. He brings things to our remembrance (John 14:26). 49. He comforts us (Acts 9:31). 50. He makes some overseers in the church and sends some out to the work of church planting [through the body] (Acts 20:28; 13:2). Summary: The Holy Spirit unites us to Jesus Christ and to His body. He reveals Christ to us, gives us His life, and makes Christ alive in us. The Spirit takes the experiences of Jesus . . . His incarnation, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension . . . and brings them into our own experience. Because of the Holy Spirit, the history of Jesus Christ becomes our story and experience (see Jesus Manifesto for details).

“Blessed is the person who is not offended by me.” ~ Matthew 11:6 To be offended means to stumble or trip. The Scripture tells us that Jesus is a rock of offense . . . or a rock of stumbling . . . to the disobedient (1 Peter 2:8). In His earthly days, the Lord Jesus was constantly offending the religious establishment. But in the above text, Jesus has someone else in mind. He’s speaking to His followers: “Blessed are you, my followers, when you are not offended by me.” The context bears this out. John the Baptist was utterly loyal to Jesus. He walked a life of total self-denial. He gave everything up for his God. And now he finds himself in a cold prison. We have no record that the Lord ever visited him there. So John is questioning and doubting. He’s probably thinking, “Was it really worth it? I lived my whole life to pave the way for the Messiah, and now I’m in prison. The kingdom hasn’t yet come.” John is wondering and wavering; he’s tempted to stumble at his Lord. So he sends word to Jesus asking, “Are you really the one who was to come? Or should we expect another?” Again, Jesus doesn’t visit John. He instead sends this answer to him via his disciples: “Go back and report to John what you’re seeing. The deaf hear; the blind see; the lepers are cleansed; the dead are raised; the good news is being preached to the poor . . . and happy is the person who is not offended in me. Peaceful is the man who doesn’t stumble over me. Blessed is the person who doesn’t fall away on account of what I do or not do.” Over the years, I’ve watched Christians take offense with the Lord. Some of them were passionate followers of Jesus in their youth, but later ended up renouncing Him. Why? Because they chose to be offended by Him. “Blessed is the person who is not offended by me.” This is the forgotten beatitude. In this post, I want to share three reasons why Christians become offended by their Lord. In part two of the series, I want to discuss the issue of Christians being offended by others. The two are distinct, but not separate. Reason 1: He demands too much. In John 16:1, Jesus tells His disciples that He’s sharing “all these things” so they won’t be offended by Him. Some of those “things” were stern warnings that they would be hated by the world and persecuted (John 15:18ff.). Jesus made clear that following Him won’t lead to a bed of roses. Suffering and loss are involved. Unfortunately, some present a gospel that leaves these parts out. The result: Christians get offended when they realize what they’ve gotten into. But Jesus lets us know up front what following Him entails. Even in His own day, some of His followers stopped walking with Him because they regarded the cost too high (John 6:53-59). Reason 2: He doesn’t meet our expectations. The Lord often works in ways that we don’t understand. I’ve heard some Christians say, “My life would have been much better today if I didn’t follow Jesus in my youth. Look where it’s gotten me.” In Finding Organic Church, I talk about the Catch-30 crisis. There comes a point in all our lives where we reassess the major commitments we’ve made in early adulthood. And we either dig in deeper or we abandon ship. Isaiah says that God’s ways are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:9). The Lord works on levels that we cannot fathom. Paul says that God works all things for our good (Romans 8:28). “Why hasn’t God answered this prayer? Why didn’t He fulfill this promise? Why did He let this happen to me? Why did He let this happen to him/her? Why is God silent when I need to hear Him most?” These are the questions that plague the mind of the serious believer. If you’ve not yet met the God who refuses to meet all your expectations, you will. And how you react in that day will reveal whether you are worshiping Jesus Christ or Santa Clause (see John 6:26). It will show whether or not you love God more than His promises (or really, your interpretation of those promises). Jeanne Guyon once said, “I will still serve Him, even if it sends me to hell.” Job said, “Shall we receive good from the hand of the Lord and not evil?” Recall the three Hebrew children. They had lived a life loyal to their God. And the pagan king said to them, “Worship my golden image or else you’re going to die in my fiery furnace.” Their answer is telling: “We’re not going to worship this image or serve your gods. The Lord is able to deliver us, and He will deliver us from your fiery furnace. But even if He doesn’t, we’re still not going to bow down to your false gods.” What an attitude. What a posture. What faith. “God will deliver us. But even if He doesn’t, we will still follow Him.” Those words contain thunder and lightning for every child of God. If I can use an illustration, we mortals are living on pages 300-400 of a 2,000 page book. Only God can see the whole book. And He’s only given us the ability to see pages 300-400. We have no capacity to understand what’s in pages 1-299 or pages 401 to 2,000. We can only speculate and assume what’s in them (hence we create all sorts of intricate theological systems to explain mysteries we don’t understand). Here’s a lesson to learn: Life always comes down to trusting in the Lord rather than trying to figure out His ways via our finite, limited understanding. Yet together, we can better discover and understand what’s in pages 300-400, and thereby learn to live more effectively within them. (I hope blog posts like this contribute to that goal.) Reason 3: He doesn’t show up on time. He works too slowly. He reacts too late. His deliverance takes too long. God’s clock is a lot slower than ours. We can text or email our prayer to God, and He doesn’t text or email back when we expect. In fact, sometimes we never hear back from Him at all. The screen is blank. Sometimes we’ll pray for an important matter in our own lives . . . . or we’ll pray for someone else . . . for years. And the dial doesn’t move. Waiting on the Lord can become weary. And it can lead to offense. But God always keeps perfect time. To sum up, here’s how NOT to offended by the Lord: Remember that He demands everything, and He has promised suffering and tribulation along with blessing and eternal life. So don’t sell out for a cheap, easy gospel. Such is not the gospel of Jesus Christ. He told us what we were getting into and exhorted us to count the cost ahead of time (Luke 14:26ff.). Remember that His ways are higher than ours, and He doesn’t always show us what He’s doing or why. We may not always understand what He does or allows, but He can still be trusted. This is the nature of walking by faith rather than by sight. Even when His grace isn’t sufficient, it is always sufficient. Remember that God is always on time, but His clock ticks differently from ours. He’s a Lord who sometimes shows up long after the hour of healing has passed and we are dead for four days. Just ask Lazarus. Being offended by God is a choice. You can choose to take offense at the Lord and stumble over that which you don’t understand. Or you can “trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not unto your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). “Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” (Romans 11:33). www.frankviola.org . Used by permission.

If the church doesn’t read the signs of the times, we will be right where we evangelicals were after Roe v. Wade—caught flat-footed and unprepared. Thankfully, the Catholics were there to supply an ethical framework and a sense of justice until some evangelicals—such as Francis Schaeffer and Jerry Falwell—emerged to rally for the lives of the unborn and their mothers. So what should we do? Well, precisely what we should have done before and after Roe. We should recognize where the courts and the culture are, and we should work for justice. That means not simply assuming that most people agree with us on marriage. We must articulate, both in and out of the church, why marriage matters, and why its definition isn’t infinitely elastic. We must—like the pro-life movement has done—seek not only to engage our base, those who already agree with us, but to persuade others who don’t. That doesn’t mean less talk about marriage and sexuality but more—and not just in sound bytes and slogans but in a robust theology of why sexual complementarity and the one-flesh union are rooted in the mystery of the gospel (Eph. 5:22-33). We must—also like the pro-life movement—understand the importance of a Supreme Court that won’t will into existence constitutional planks by force of its own will. That requires a persuasive public witness, and a long-term as well as a short-term strategy. That means fighting—as we are doing—for the Court not to invalidate state definitions of marriage and for the culture to recognize that a state that can force people to participate in what they believe to be sin is a state that is too big for the common good. Above all, we must prepare people for what the future holds, when Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality aren’t part of the cultural consensus but are seen to be strange and freakish and even subversive. If our people assume that everything goes back to normal with the right President and a quick constitutional amendment, they are not being equipped for a world that views evangelical Protestants and traditional Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews and others as bigots or freaks. Jesus told us we would have hard times. He never promised us a prosperity gospel. He said we would face opposition, but he said he would be with us. If we are going to be faithful to his gospel, we must preach repentance—even when that repentance is culturally unwelcome. And we must preach that any sinner can be forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. That means courage and that means kindness. Sexual revolutionaries will hate the repentance. Buffoonish heretics, who want only to vent paranoia and rally their troops, will hate the kindness. So be it. Our churches must be ready to call out the revisionists who wish to do away with a Christian sexual ethic. And we must be ready to call out those who tell us that acknowledging the signs of the times is forbidden, and we should just keep doing what we’ve been doing. An issue this culturally powerful cannot be addressed by a halfway-gospel or by talk-radio sloganeering. The marriage revolution around us means we must do a better job articulating a theology of marriage to our people, as well as a theology of suffering and marginalization. It means we must do a better job articulating to those on the outside why children need both a Mom and a Dad, not just “parents,” and why marriage isn’t simply a matter of court decree. It means we must start teaching our children about marriage “from the beginning” as male and female when they’re in Sunday school. It means we may have to decide if and when the day will come in which we will refuse to sign the state’s marriage licenses. Long term the prospects for marriage are good. Sexual revolutions always disappoint, and God has designed marriage, biblically defined, to be resilient. But, short term, the culture of marriage is dark indeed. That’s why we have a gospel that is the power of God. This post originally appeared at Moore to the Point.

The stern warning to Ephesus is followed by an encouragement that is notoriously difficult to understand. It is this encouragement that provides us with a considerable amount of clarity about the matter of criticism itself. 6 But you do have this going for you: You hate what the Nicolaitans practice – practices I also hate. (Rev 2:6) The encouragement had to do with Christ’s affirmation that the believers in Ephesus do hate the deeds of the Nicolaitans. In order to understand what those deeds may have been we must see what John was asked to write to the congregation in another great Roman city in the Asia Minor – the City of Pergamum. We read in Rev. 2:13-15 “I know where you dwell, where Satan’s throne is… I have a few things against you, because you have there some who hold the teaching of Balaam, who kept teaching Balak to put a stumbling block before the sons of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols and to commit acts of immorality. So you also have some who in the same way hold the teaching of the Nicolaitans.” ( Rev 2:13-15 ) In these verses we see the evil deeds of Balaam in teaching Balak to entice Israel to sin. The treachery concerned two things 1) eating foods sacrificed to idols and 2) engaging in acts that are sexually immoral ( Num 22-24 ). T hese things are somehow connected with the evil teachings of the Nicolaitans. Incidentally, the decision of the Jerusalem council as expressed in their letter to the Gentile followers of Jesus, while exempting the non-Jews from all kinds of burdens of observance obligatory to Jews, set forth a concrete set of food-related prohibitions for Gentiles as well. We read in Acts 15:28-29 , “For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these essentials: that you abstain from things sacrificed to idols and from blood and from things strangled and from fornication; if you keep yourselves free from such things, you will do well. Farewell.” It is not hard to notice that out of four behaviors forbidden to Gentiles two had do to with Nicolaitans and Balam/Balak issues (eating food sacrificed to idols and sexual immorality). It is important to see that this combination of food and sex-related offenses was particularly important for the Jewish Apostles and elders to address in their letter to Gentile converts to the Jewish Christ. In other words, is it even conceivable that the Apostles would permit Gentile followers of Christ to commit murder, to steal or to be obsessed with the possessions of their neighbors?! The answer to this is of course not. This was not a comprehensive list. But these issues brought up at the Jerusalem Council (consuming food sacrificed to idols, blood, and illicit sex) seem to constitute central challenges that the Gentile followers of the Jewish Christ encountered in their daily lives in the Roman Empire. In the Roman world, the overwhelming majority of meat sold on the market was first offered/dedicated to one or another deity. The only exception to this was the Judean/Jewish isolation from the rest of the Roman population who had their own slaughter rules and privileges. Most Jews residing in the Roman Empire were a part of the network in which food was handled differently. The writings of the Apostle Paul to the nations (all the letters that Saul/Paul ever wrote that made into our New Testament) show clearly that these issues continued to plague the believers enough for him to address them in considerable detail (1 Cor.8-10). Judging from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians (that we mistakenly call the first Letter to the Corinthians – 1 Cor.5:9) some Gentile Christ-followers felt that they could continue to purchase and consume meat that had been sacrificed to a pagan deity. The Apostle Paul while agreeing with them that these gods (idols) are nothing, sides with the Jerusalem council in forbidding all the Gentile Christ-followers from eating food associated with Greco-Roman worship rituals in any way (1 Cor.8:1-13). Having considered this important issue, let us return to the discussion of the Nicolaitans. Who were the Nicolaitans and what is the origin of this word that first comes up in Rev. 2:6and then is repeated in Rev. 2:15? The main traditional attempt to understand the etymology of the word is often tied to diaconal appointee Nicolas in Acts 6:5 – “The proposal pleased the entire group, so they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit, with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas, a Gentile convert to Judaism from Antioch.” Presumably at some later stage Nicolas began to teach what was eventually defined as evil deeds of the Nicolaitans and the matter is quite obscure. However, there is another, often overlooked option, suggested many years ago by great Jewish Christian Hebraist John Lightfoot. It allows one to continue reading the Book of Revelation as thoroughly Jewish anti-Roman document. He suggested that perhaps deacon Nicolas was a wrong trail to follow. Instead Nicolaitans was a Hebraism (in this case something originally said in Hebrew but spelled with Greek letters). What did he have in mind? In Hebrew in order to say “we will eat” verb ???? (nokhal) would have been used. We read in Is.4:1, “And seven women shall take hold of one man in that day, saying, “We will eat (???????) our own bread and wear our own clothes, only let us be called by your name; take away our reproach. If this Hebrew word ???? (nokhal) is transferred into Greek it can be used as a term describing the “we will eat” people. In a sense that this was their motto, their sentiment – “we will eat” the food that others think is forbidden (food offered to pagan deities). Thus ??? ?????????? (ton nikolaton) “the Nicolaitans” as a group or teaching can originate from Hebrew ???? (nokhal) “we will eat” making a cohesive connection to the context of Balaam and Balak and incident in the book of Numbers referred to in Rev. 2:13-15. 7 The one who has an ear had better hear what the Spirit says to the churches. To the one who conquers, will permit him to eat from the tree of life that is in the paradise of God.’ (Rev 2:7) “The one who has an ear, let him hear” is also a Hebraism that is used also on a number of occasions in the Gospels by Jesus himself. For example, in parable of the seed falling on the good soil and producing various level of fruit (Mark 4:1-20). The basic meaning of this Hebraism is this: “if one is able to hear it, one must obey it.” In this case (Rev. 2:7) what the Holy Spirit is saying to the Christ-following congregations of the Asia Minor is so important that if one hears it, one must obey it. Besides the Hebraism there is a word play in Greek of this verse. The one who hears is “the one who overcomes” ?? ??????? (to nikoti) which is a form of the verb ????? (nikao) that means “to win, conquer, persevere and be victorious”. This suspiciously sounds very similar to the term we just encountered – ??????????? (nikolates) “a Nicolaitan”. If the motto of Nicolaitans is “we will eat” then as a pun this is exactly what God promises to the one who overcomes. If they forgo eating food sacrificed to idols they will eat of the Tree of Life and live. The writer of the Wisdom of Solomon compared the righteous people to the trees of life, as if each one of them is a tree. 1 Faithful is the Lord to them that love Him in truth, To them that endure His chastening, (2) To them that walk in the righteousness of His commandments, In the law which He commanded us that we might live. 2(5) The pious of the Lord shall live by it forever; The Paradise of the Lord, the trees of life, are His pious ones. 3(4) Their planting is rooted for ever. They shall not be plucked up all the days of heaven: (5) For the portion and the inheritance of God is Israel. ( Wisdom of Solomon 14:1-5 ) Almighty always keeps those he calls and chooses. He chastises them but always desires for them to prove themselves faithful, so that they may be with him forever, planted as the trees in the House of the Lord. This was a serious warning. www.eteacherbiblical.com . Used by permission.