Teaching Truth to Landon

After a wonderful Sunday School class on the 12 Great Feasts of the Church, one of my favorite ladies in our parish told me, “I have been in church all my life. I’ve raised my kids in church too. Here I am, in my 60′s, and I’m learning things that I never knew about God, His Church, the Church calendar…I’m so thankful for this information.” This dear lady had tears as she shared what was in her heart. I could see how hungry she is for the Lord and how eager she is to know Him more.

Jeremy and I have often felt the same in recent months. We have discovered the difference between getting Truth, and getting the fullness of the Truth. There is an enormous difference. So much so that, although we are extremely thankful for our upbringing, it is hard not to feel somehow robbed because there is so much we were not taught; so much we didn’t know. Our parents didn’t know either. And their parents didn’t know. Yet, the Bible commands that everything be passed on to our children so that they will know the glorious works of God….

Give ear, O my people, to my law;  incline your ears to the words of my mouth.  I will open my mouth in a parable;  I will utter dark sayings of old,  which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told us.  We will not hide them from their children, telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord,  and His strength and His wonderful works that He has done.  For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which He commanded our fathers,  that they should make them known to their children;  That the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may arise and declare them to their children,  that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments;  And may not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright, and whose spirit was not faithful to God. ~ Psalm 78:1-8

There are many commands throughout Scripture to pass on what we have been taught to our children. There are blessings if we do, and curses if we do not. In the New Testament Paul praised the Corinthians for “holding fast to the Traditions, whether by word or epistle”.  He not only praised them for holding fast to the traditions, but he praised them for holding to them just as he delivered to them! (1 Corinth. 11:2) We reap blessings when we hold fast to the traditions of our early fathers, our first Church!

Then Paul warns the Galatians later, “But even if we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel to you than what we have preached to you, let him be accursed.  As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:8-9)  I don’t know about you, but being accursed sounds pretty serious to me! It seems very important to find out the message that Paul and all the Apostles delivered to the Church, and find out exactly how he delivered them so we can imitate them! For Paul also said, “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ”.  (1 Corinthians 11:1)

Our Lord and Savior gave a command in His Great Commission when He said,  “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you.” Note first of all that Jesus says right off the bat that all authority has been given to Him in heaven AND on earth. He then gives authority to His disciples and tells them to go into all nations and teach everything that He as taught them. Everything! What is everything? If we are to do what He said, we’d better know what everything is that He taught the disciples. And we can know.

Passing from Generation to Generation to Generation

Our God is faithful to us. We must be faithful to Him and keep His commands. He promises to be found if we seek Him with all our hearts. We must pass everything on to our children. That might mean the dark sayings of old, like the Psalmist wrote about. Sounds kind of creepy, I know, but if it’s important enough to include in the Bible, then we should find out what it means so we can pass it on to our children!  It is not too late! Thanks be to God, our dear parishioner in her 60′s recognizes that it is not too late! She can still pass it on to her children even if they are fully grown with their own children. With the strength of God and His enduring mercies, we will diligently be passing these Truth’s on to Joshua and Landon. May God be pleased to open their eyes and their ears! To the praise of His glorious grace, Amen!

We all enjoy convenience and simplicity. We all like for things to be easy and right at our fingertips. This is what we enjoy so much about technology. And in times like we are living, boy do we ever have things right at our fingertips!

Last weekend, we celebrated the Feast of the Theophany,  one of the Great Feasts of the liturgical year. “Theophany” comes from the Greek for “God shining forth,” or “The appearance of God”.  The emphasis at this feast is on the shining forth and revelation of Jesus Christ as the Messiah and second Person of the Holy Trinity at the time of His baptism.  When Jesus was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended from Heaven and a voice said, “This is my Son, in Whom I am well pleased.” It is at this time that we see God in three Persons…The Blessed Trinity.

We have been talking a lot about St. John the Baptist with Landon in recognition of the Feast we were about to celebrate. What Landon remembers most about St. John the Baptist is that, eventually, he is beheaded! That’s our little macabre Landon for you! To take his mind off that gloom and doom side of the story, we touched on what it must have been like to be a cousin to Jesus Himself. We are all quite fascinated that John, as a baby in his mothers’ womb, knew that the Lord was near and leaped for joy inside! How he must have loved his cousin. We wonder what it was like to be John, living in the wilderness and having the awesome responsibility of proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus before people knew who He was. The forerunner to our very Lord and Saviour would say, “Repent! And be baptized! For the Kingdom of Heaven is near!”

The Kingdom of Heaven is near. I wonder if people knew what that meant. Suddenly, Jesus comes to the waters of the Jordan. He asked John to baptize Him, and John, though feeling unworthy, does so. People there behold the Blessed Trinity for the first time. And from then on, we hear Jesus say not that the Kingdom of Heaven is near, but “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand”.

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand…What does this mean? If we believe that Jesus is the very Son of God, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, then we must also believe He has a Kingdom and dwells there. And because He is also God, He is not limited to time and space, so His Kingdom is everywhere!  Because of His virgin birth, His death on the Cross, His resurrection, and ascension into Heaven, He brings the Kingdom to us! The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. Near us…right at our fingertips! On Sunday, when we were in His Church with His Body of believers, the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand because we were really in it – mystically transported right into the throne room of Heaven! That is too awesome to fathom!

The Lord also tells His disciples that the “Kingdom of Heaven is within you”. Another mind-blowing concept! After being Baptized, we have the unbelievable gift of the Kingdom right within us. He came to us, dwelt among us, and is in us. It is so easy now to see why there are so many prayers about repentance, forgiveness and holiness in our Orthodox prayer books. As ruler of our lives, we should do well to live according to His perfect ways as to not be exiled from His Kingdom. When we live according to our own ways, our own flesh, or how the world would have us live, we cut ourselves off from Him and cannot benefit from the Kingdom.

The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand. It is not so much a place. It is not so much a where, but a Who. He is right at our fingertips. He is near, within easy reach. Just how we all like it to be. Will we not reach out and grasp Him? Especially when He has made it so easy?

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Somebody told me that this path that leads to heaven will not be the easy way. Well I found that to be true. Oh, but I also found out there’s…No better place on earth than the road that leads to heaven.  No other place I’d rather be…

I know this path I travel on is very straight and narrow. But I’ve looked down other roads along the way and from all I’ve seen I can say without a doubt there’s…No better place on earth than the road that leads to heaven. No other place I’d rather be…

I turned the radio off when the song was over and found myself tearing up as I looked at the scenery surrounding the road I was on. Call it whatever experience you like, but I used to call it a “God moment”, and I just started weeping. I began to think about my life in the past few years and how much it has changed. At each turn, I can look back and see myself glancing down different roads. I took some that were, without a doubt, wrong turns. Now it seems that everything in the past few years pointed to this one road – the one that I am on now. It is a narrow road. It is one that I have found hard to understand at times and hard to explain because the world has so distorted it. It has seemed to be so clearly the wrong direction to some, but just as clearly the right direction to me. And there really is no other place I’d rather be.

When you are on the right road, one can become relaxed and look around more. One is at peace knowing that, no matter the challenges along the way, as long as we are headed the right direction, all is well. The road is beautiful. It is the road to heaven…and it begins right here on earth.

I experience heaven on earth in Divine Liturgy at our Church. If you have never set foot into an Eastern Orthodox Church, you will not know what I mean until you do. It is an experience like none other. I sincerely recommend giving it a try. I cannot help but be humbled and awed every time I walk into the doors of our Church. To know that we are worshipping the way God instructed His people to worship! To know that God instructed Worship to be patterned after worship in heaven and that we are still doing it to this day! To know that we have a glimpse of heavenly worship in the book of Revelation, and that our worship is patterned after that to this very day! Yes, there is a road that leads to heaven. I am finally on it…And there is no place I’d rather be than the road that leads to heaven.

Our time continued at the festival, and Landon once more put me to shame. Before leaving for the day, the kids all wanted to get their faces painted. While I picked out a cute little heart to have painted on my cheek, I overheard Landon asking for a Cross. A blue Cross, and could they please make it look like the one at our Church? I looked over to watch him actually draw an Orthodox Cross for the young girl to give her an example. It was one of the prettiest Russian Orthodox Crosses, I have ever seen.

On our journey to Orthodoxy, I marvel sometimes at how Landon is often more Orthodox than I am. I’m witness to the Kingdom of God getting into his heart. It may just be in the choice of words, that he remembers to pray, or in what he chooses for face paint. But it is in those simple things in life that the Kingdom of God can shine through in the dark world we live in.  When I think about how many times I have failed or fallen short as his Momma, I can only ask God to have mercy on me and give me the strength and courage to do better. I always remember to thank God for giving Jeremy and I the awesome privilege to be Landon’s parents, and I know that, every step of the way, He will continue to teach us by way of the Church, through the reading of His Word, through the guidance of His Holy Spirit, and through the grace and mercy of His precious Son Jesus. To Him be all glory, honor and praise, now and ever and unto ages of ages! Amen

Landon is ready to do his morning chores with me. We head outside to feed and water the animals, which just increased today by two more. Our Momma cat Autumn, just had her second litter of kittens. We may see one or two more by tomorrow, but she was happily nursing two dark little striped tinies last we looked in the nesting box. We enjoy the quiet here immensely. I say it’s quiet until Landon starts hollering for Gracie and Bella (our two chocolate lab/boxer mix dogs) to come and get their breakfast. I breathe in one more scent of the fresh morning air before heading inside to start our day off with Matins. (Our morning prayers) After breakfast, Landon is ready for school, which is in a spare room that we designed like a classroom. While other children start their day with the pledge to the American flag, we are able to start our school day with an opening prayer that God would be in our school work that day, in our conversation with each other, and we pray that God would be in all learning in all schools worldwide and that all children will have the opportunity to come to know the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray for our families, for our country, and for all those that are sick and in need. Then, the school work begins.

Landon is a noisy little boy. He must hum, or constantly be speaking or acting out stories even while working on his papers. His brother Joshua was just like that! It’s rather annoying, and I know he doesn’t work well doing that, so today I turned on the digital piano we have onto auto play for all the recorded classical songs. It played very softly while he worked, and do you know what? He did not make a sound with his mouth! He diligently worked for 30 minutes and finished all his papers with barely a word. And only one correction needed to be made. I’ve decided to put this into practice every day! He also read his first little reader by himself today. I think he felt pretty proud of himself when all was said and done. We finished the day with a Christian story about a little boy in Africa named Mwangi, and then read about St. Andrew of Crete, who was martyred for the Faith. I was given another simple blessing…Landon hugged me before heading out to play and said, “This was a very good day, wasn’t it Mommy? You’re the best Mommy that ever was and ever will be again on this whole earth!”…Ah, the simple blessings that God gives us every day. They tend to build a strong foundation that help us prepare for the tribulations that we know we must go through also. I have come to realize and be thankful for each small thing in life that most would take for granted. In doing so, my husband and I have complained less, we love more and are humbled by just about everything. Thanks be to God!

Have a good week, and enjoy your blessings…and don’t forget to praise God for them!

Our 3 year synopsis in a nutshell: We own our business, Smart Cooking: Tri-State, and that keeps us hopping. We depend on it to keep me home with Landon, so Jeremy works during the day at home, but many evenings, he is out working. Our little guy will soon be 6 years old by the end of the year. My last blog entry, he was only 2 1/2! He officially started his Kindergarten year, and I have officially become his teacher! I know that homeschooling will have its challenges, but from what I have experienced thus far…I LOVE IT! I put Landon to bed one night and he said, “I am the luckiest boy in the world to have you has my Mommy AND my teacher!” I am the lucky one!

My Mom and Step-Dad moved just 2.5 hrs away from us. It was not long after their move here that my Step-Dad, (I call him Pop) was diagnosed with cancer of the neck. On December 16th, 2010, Pop passed away in his sleep. I was with my Mom and my Step-Sister Ginger. I have known him and loved him since I was 15 yrs old. I am thankful that he loved the Lord, and that he was at peace when he left this world for the better life in store for him. He poured himself out and was one of the most generous men I’ve ever known. I miss you, Pop.

My precious Dad lived with us from July of 2008, until February of 2011. He moved into an Assisted Living apartment with the intention of moving back in with us as soon as we renovated a house we purchased in the country. It sits on 5 very treed acres, has outstanding views, and is the perfect ranch style home for us. It needed some severe renovation, and I could not care for him and do the work on the house at the same time. While we worked away on the house, he began to deteriorate physically. We were able to move him back home into the new house, into his new room. I will never forget the look on his face when he saw the views. He sat in his wheel chair outside before we took him in, and looked over the field of wheat just across our road and said, “Praise God! My dream come true!” We took him inside his room, and he raved about how well we had renovated and what great decorators we are! 8 days later, he fell asleep in the Lord. He was the first in our family to become Orthodox, and he was the first in our family to have an Orthodox burial. May his memory be eternal. We all miss him.

As far as our journey into Orthodoxy? What a long tale, but a good one! It is in fact, my favorite part of our story in the last 3 years. We came to Southern IL to plant an Anglican Church, which we did. It was not long after we planted the church that we began to research and study more about the early church. We wondered, why all the denominations? 25,000 or more denominations! Were we right to be Anglican? Where was the Church that Jesus started with His apostles? With each question we had, we backed up a step away from the Anglican church and finally ended up turning around and smacked into the Eastern Orthodox Church. Thanks be to God! What we found there was a little foreign, and a little scary because we didn’t understand it all. But when preaching words of eternal life to His disciples, many of them murmured and said, “This is a hard saying; who can understand it?” John 6:60   And from that time, many of his disciples left and walked with Him no more. And Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” Simon Peter answered and said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. John 60:67-69

There were things in the Orthodox Church that were hard to understand at first, but we had backed ourselves right into the Early Church of 2000 years ago, and there was no place else for us to go. We could go back no further, and we certainly could not walk away. In January of 2010, we became catechumens and began to learn what being Orthodox (the word Orthodox means, correct praise, or right worship) was all about. A little over a year later, we entered the Church. Praise be to God!

I will write a little each week as we continue on our journey. I like to write about being a Wife, a Mom, Home Schooling, living out in the country, etc. I will share recipes that I hope you will enjoy, share pictures from time to time, and talk about what it’s like to be an Orthdox Christian woman in the 21st Century! Until next time, may God be with you!

Well, according to scripture, it is.  Paul told us in 1 Corinthians 10:30 that, whatever we do, we are to do it all for the glory of God.  Then, in 2 Corinthians 10:5, he told us to take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

1 Cor. 10:31 says that EVERYTHING you do is supposed to be done for the glory of God, no matter what . . . even eating and drinking.  If you drink orange juice, it should be to His glory!  There is also 2 Cor. 10:5, which commands us to take EVERY THOUGHT captive to Christ . . . that includes every thought about education, every thought about politics, etc.

In Matthew 12:30, Jesus said, ”He who is not with me is against me.”

I’m sorry, but neutrality really is a fallacy.

Just to preface this article, I ask that you PLEASE read the entire thing. I would rather you read it all and send me lots of angry comments than for you to just stop reading if you disagree. Thanks!

In order to approach the topic of how we should vote, we must lay a foundation of understanding two key principles–moral relativism and situational ethics.   Moral relativism is something that plagues the church today, but at least in theory most Christians would recognize that it is wrong. Moral relativism says that there is no absolute moral truth that applies to all situations. For example, relative morality says that watching a TV show that endorses sin is okay as long as it’s not nearly as bad as what most people in the church watch. Or that wearing a tempting bikini is okay since it’s not nearly as revealing as what all the other girls are wearing. While many believers fall prey to moral relativism, I have found few foolish enough to argue it is Scripturally warranted.

Then we have situational ethics. This is where many Christians often tend to fall into the trap of pragmatism, but I am convinced it is not scriptural just as moral relativism is not Scriptural. Situational ethics say that there ARE absolute moral truths but that sometimes they must be set aside in certain situations to accomplish some greater good. It’s the concept that the end justifies the means. This leads to people justifying lying when they fear that the truth would be offensive. It also is the leading reason of why people vote for the ”lesser of two evils” rather than voting for a candidate that most closely aligns with Godly principles expressed in the Bible. 

Neither of these can be true. Scripture clearly teaches that God is Truth and that He is unchanging–the same yesterday, today, and forever. God never in His Word teaches that we should measure ourselves by the way others live their lives. The choices in our lives are only measured against the holiness of God. 

How does this apply to how you vote?? Think of it this way… if your vote were the only one that mattered–if YOU alone picked our next president, would you vote for McCain or Obama? I pray that if you know the Bible even a little, you have the sense to emphatically say, ”NEITHER!” Neither of these candidates come close to God’s standard of morality. When there is a Godly candidate like Chuck Baldwin, why would you ever want someone like McCain or Obama in office? 

I ask you then… if only your vote mattered and you know that the right thing would be to vote for someone other than McCain or Obama, then why should your standard change just because of how you know everyone else is going to vote? Does the fact that only McCain or Obama has a shot at the presidency make it acceptable to not vote for the best candidate? Pragmatists like to call this “throwing away your vote” but I think it’s more of a throw-away when you do not heed the Biblical standards of a Godly leader. 

Imagine this… what if you had McCain, Obama, and Jesus running. Jesus is an independent and you KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt He has no chance of actually winning. Wouldn’t you still vote for Him? Of course–He’s the best candidate! Now, this is only an analogy and I recognize that no candidate is perfect like Jesus, but I think the analogy is a useful one for helping us recognize we should vote for the best candidate, not the lesser of two evils who at least has a chance of winning. 

You might say “well, you could vote righteously for the next 100 years and it probably won’t make any difference. An independent still won’t get into office.” And you’d probably be right. I am not here to argue that point. But God’s moral standards are absolute, not relative. Where in Scripture are we called to act morally only if the outcome is what we want? I’ll tell you what we find in Scripture. God tells His people to follow His values and to trust that He will take care of us. We do not need to compromise our values in order to help God take care of us or our nation; God doesn’t call us to be pragmatists. God is in control no matter what. What we have to keep in mind is that we will give an account for every godly or ungodly choice we make. And on judgment day we cannot say “but doing the right thing wouldn’t have mattered in that situation.”

God calls us to choose righteousness. Period. If I vote for a candidate who is the lesser of two evils, am I choosing righteousness? No! Can we expect any candidate to be fully righteous? Clearly I am not saying that. But when there is a clearly MOST righteous candidate and we as Christians do not choose him, we are intentionally choosing unrighteousness. 

If you really think that Obama or McCain is the MOST godly candidate running, then by all means vote for them. But if you don’t, I’d ask you to please think before compromising your values for the sake of going with the crowd.

P.S. - I present all this to you in humility. If anyone can indicate to me where in Scripture where God indicates that the ends do justify the means, then I would be more than willing to admit I’m wrong. However, if you can’t find any Scriptural backing for voting the lesser of two evils, I beg you to not do it because it’s what you’ve always done or because it’s what most Christians do.

• Getting your toes stepped on.
• Hitting the nail on the head.
• If the shoe fits, wear it.

When confronted with Truth – be it in a sermon, in a book or on a blog – you have only three possible responses:  Repent, Retaliate or Run.

Repentance is the only acceptable response.  It means that Truth, when shown, is more important to you than your being right.  It means that Truth is more important than your comfort.  It means that Truth is so important to you that you’d be willing to change your beliefs, change your mind, change your behaviors, even change your life in order to align yourself with that Truth.  No matter what it costs you in money, time, status, relationships, or beliefs, aligning with Truth is more important.

Retaliation is most often in the form of name calling, angry comments or even,  referring to a story I heard from a friend of mine last weekend who was actually sued by his church for preaching the Truth, litigation.

Running, however, is the strangest of all reactions.  It is akin to putting your fingers in your ears and singing, “La la la la la,” at the top of your lungs.  When he is nervous, my cousin’s son, who is 18 months old, closes his eyes and pretends you’re not there.  Post-modernists wave it off saying, “Well, what’s true for you may not be true for everyone else.”

But Christians play a different game.  Oh, it is still running, but what they do is play it pious.  They say, “Christians shouldn’t torment each other with things like this,” or “It is just a minor topic, I don’t have time for this,” or even, “I don’t feel like God is edified in this.”  The real reason these comments are made, however, is because they should be repenting instead of running.

If I have said anything in these blog entries that you disagree with, that’s fine.  I’m aware that some things may be confrontational at times.  They’re written that way on purpose.  But before you retaliate or run, you should first go back and look at each comment, research each verse, and then comment on those.  Don’t just throw out an opinion without specifically addressing the assertions.

I may not have grasped the Truth perfectly in all of my blog entries, but one thing I know:  When you throw a brick into a herd of pigs, the one that squeals the loudest is the one that got hit!