If you follow me regularly, and I really hope you do. By the way, I want to welcome some new followers who signed up last week. Let me remind everyone to go to ElbertNasworthy.com and sign up. That way we can get information to you and you will get notices when a new post comes out. Also, I am now posting video blogs on my Rumble channel which is ElbertNasworthy when you go to Rumble channels. I hope you will sign up for those, too. OK, enough of the promoting how to get things I am talking and writing about. I don’t like to promote but there is no other way to get this in your hands and that of others. Please help promote what we are doing.
As you know I have been reading lately in Proverbs. Proverbs 1 begins with these words reading from the New Living Translation-
1 “These are the proverbs of Solomon, David’s son, king of Israel.
2 Their purpose is to teach people wisdom and discipline, to help them understand the insights of the wise.
3 Their purpose is to teach people to live disciplined and successful lives, to help them do what is right, just, and fair.
4 These proverbs will give insight to the simple, knowledge and discernment to the young.”
In the Proverbs, there are profound and complex writings along with simple and practical statements regarding people and situations. The book certainly lives up to what Solomon said it was intended to provide to the reader. In reading in the Proverbs each day, I have found myself considering what is going on around me directly and indirectly in a different way than I might have just a few days or weeks ago. It has certainly made me more sensitive to what I see or read.
In considering where we are on the eschatological timeline (I know I used one of those big fancy words), when I could have just said end times. I did it on purpose and that is because we need to quit dumbing things down and get more serious about what we are doing and why. We have taken the easy road for too long in our lives as Christians, in our churches and even in our families. That is one of the reasons we are in the place we are as a world, nation, church and families. God has been marginalized by our actions and if we see it then we repent and correct the action. To repent is to turn away from sin and turn back to God.
Repentance was not a one-time event when you were saved. It is a continual action required to keep our life, heart, and mind focused on the Lord. It begins when we sin and follow the direction of God’s Word as seen in Acts 3:19-
19 Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out,...
You see repentance is an ongoing part of the Christian life. We will sin and the Word tells us that in 1 John 1:9-
9 That if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive of us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
As I consider God’s Word and the influence of His Holy Spirit in my life, I am sensing His movement in lives. Is there a revival beginning in the church today? I certainly hope so, don’t you? A renewal of God in people and churches everywhere. There has always been a need for revival and today is one of those days. People drawing close to Him and living in love toward others as the Great Commandment teaches. Then expressing the Great Commission toward those around them.
Listen please, there are a lot of terrible and ungodly things happening in homes here and throughout this country and the world. We are not isolated from what is happening in the homes of others and certainly not for the actions of those in faraway countries. Yet, there seems to be a hope.
The Bible.org explains hope this way-
In Scripture, according to the Hebrew and Greek words translated by the word “hope” and according to the biblical usage, hope is an indication of certainty. “Hope” in Scripture means “a strong and confident expectation.” Though archaic today in modern terms, hope is akin to trust and a confident expectation.
Hope may refer to the activity of hoping, or to the object hoped for—the content of one’s hope. By its very nature, hope stresses two things: (a) futurity, and (b) invisibility. It deals with things we can’t see or haven’t received or both .
Romans 8:24-25
24 For in hope we have been saved, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one also hope for what he sees?
25 But if we hope for what we do not see, with perseverance we wait eagerly for it.
Biblically, from the standpoint of the object hoped for, hope is synonymous with salvation and its many blessings, past, present, and future, as promised in Scripture. It is my hope and prayer that we as Christians get this right. We are easily distracted and that is because we allow the enemy to distract us. A good friend many years ago said “all in the name of Christ, ain’t”. I used that this past Sunday in a message. It is bad English but it is good preaching.
My role as a believer is to change the world through loving people and telling them about Jesus Christ. If you and I do that, we have met the call of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. There is great strength and freedom in knowing that God’s got this and I have done what is required of me.
In God’s Grace,
Elbert Nasworthy
