Nick’s Walk

When I begin to work on my blog each morning, i do a couple of things. Sometimes I will look for the  definition of a key word. Today I did that for Carnality. It wasn’t much help. It means “worldly, earthly or relating to the physical.” Then I will do an image search using the same word. I got an eyeful when I did that with carnality. After reading and rereading OC, carnality reminds me of chewing gum, stuck on the sole of your shoe. Just when I think my walk is going pretty well, I get a reminder that I’m still pretty worldly. “Where there are envy, strife, and divisions among you, are you not carnal . . . ?” —1 Corinthians 3:3 Maybe I’ll get involved in some “envy, strife and division” or maybe some temptation, thought long ago banished will return. “The natural man, or unbeliever, knows nothing about carnality. The desires of the flesh warring against the Spirit, and the Spirit warring against the flesh, which began at rebirth, are what produce carnality and the awareness of it.” I think what OC is saying is that before salvation, these pieces of gum on our shoes […]

Down in the valley I don’t do well in valleys and I think I’m in one. Saturday I attended a two and a half hour meeting that should have taken twenty minutes. It’s for a ministry I love, but it’s not the part where we see God work, but where  we do mundane planning. It’s not where God is in view but where we produce work that God will really have to miraculously transform. This week I face mostly paperwork. I like being a trial lawyer because I like being in trial, not doing paperwork. My big project at home, new steps for our patio, has moved from the won’t-it-be-great stage to the will-it-ever-be-done stage. Finally, I love winter, but really will this one ever end. I was as cold yesterday as I was all winter. Mainly I was looking forward to the hills of spring and have had enough of the valleys of winter. To top it all OC is particularly cryptic today. But I think he’s talking about what I’m going through, as usual. “Did not our heart burn within us?”Luke 24:32 “We need to learn this secret of the burning heart. Suddenly Jesus appears to us, […]

Have I been crucified with Christ? Galatians 2:20 To say I have been is an affirmation of a fact, a “done deal.” It’s more than a good intention, a promise to try. OC tells us that its result is “then all that Christ wrought for me on the Cross is wrought in me. The free committal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holiness of Jesus Christ. “. . . nevertheless I live. . . .” The individuality remains, but the mainspring, the ruling disposition, is radically altered. The same human body remains, but the old satanic right to myself is destroyed.” How can I know that this crucifixion is a fact in me? It certainly has to be more than a feeling. There must be some evidence.  “And the life which I now live in the flesh . . . ,” not the life which I long to live and pray to live, but the life I now live in my mortal flesh, the life which men can see, “I live by the faith of the Son of God.” This faith is not Paul’s faith in Jesus Christ, but the […]

  I am blessed that my wife is also my best friend. Communication may be the fire of any relationship but a relationship is great when words are often not necessary. Merely being in the presence of the friend is enough and communication takes place without words.  If we are to be true friends of God our relationship with Him should develop to the “mere presence” level. When we start with God we delight in our time with Him but that time is infrequent and it takes effort. We have to go to our “special” place. We need solitude and silence. At the very early stages we do most of the talking. But as with any friendship, as it develops we begin to listen and listening becomes a greater delight than talking. My strongest memory of my first date with Rosemary was that we talked. I came away from that experience feeling that I had never spoken that much or that openly with anyone. It was just the beginning of our great relationship. That’s what we seek with God.  With a friend you never need to ask what they want. You just know it. But even after years of […]

I like this painting of Abraham. It’s not Abraham after he is the Father of Nations. It’s Abraham when Abraham Believed God. He  believed Him  before there was evidence of the fulfillment of His promises. What does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.” Romans 4:3 God made promises to Abraham, promises that he would be  blessed to be a blessing.  Those promises were kept by God in His time and in His place. Abram had to first become a new creature, at least one with a new name. He had to leave country and family and go to a land he did not know. He had to have faith he would father a nation even as his body and that of his wife withered and aged. He had to believe even when asked to give up his son.  Abraham  believed God but it wasn’t easy and it wasn’t quick. Abraham had to become God’s man. To be God’s man means to be separate, one of the definitions of holiness. “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even […]

OC can be pretty deep. His spiritual musings often have me reading and re-reading several times. His words are challenging as today when he explores issues of perfecting holiness in the fear of God. Sometimes I need more practical lessons. I got such a lesson the last two days at MacDonald’s in Rayne.  The men of Amana took on the task of disassembly and reassembly of a “play land” which Mac Donalds has donated to the church. It is no small task. I would like to say my contribution has been substantial, but there is too much evidence to the contrary. My greatest contribution has been staying out of the way, handing tools to the real workers when I understood what tool they were asking for and driving around a trailer that someone else donated. But I have been greatly blessed watching men who certainly had more pressing things to do, spend hours in cheerful, difficult, and productive labor. At Amana we are blessed with leadership and membership that is not afraid to get its hands’ dirty or to take on the toughest jobs.  Today OC asks: “Am I perfecting this type of holiness in the fear of God? […]

So we make it our goal to please him. 2 Corinthians 5:9 I love to watch my great-granddaughter Kaydence. She knows what she wants. She’s happy, ecstatic really, when she gets it and she’s upset when she doesn’t. Life at 18 months is pretty simple. But you can begin to see traces of complexity. She is beginning to want to please others. She loves to dance around, but she’s starting to like the attention it gets her. She’s starting down the road that leads to acting to please others. That’s a good thing. A step in the process of maturing. We are meant to move from being self pleasers to being unselfish people with a desire to give pleasure to others.  But there is a further step in maturing, getting to the point when our principal motivation is to please God. The child of God lives to put a smile on the face of God. It’s a high place of maturity and a difficult place to stay. We keep slipping back into a life of self pleasing or people pleasing.  No one likes a self pleaser. After all they’re selfish. Thinking mainly of their own desires, they go through […]

When I was a student, I was a crammer. I would wait until right before a test to try to learn all the information put before me since the last test. This was a particularly difficult exercise in classes in which only a final exam is given. I would have to  try to learn all the material in the course in a couple of days. Not a good idea. Craming in life is an even worse idea.  We know that there is a great test at the end.  Paul says that we must all, preacher and people alike, “appear before the judgment seat of Christ.” Like a class with a test only at the end, our tendency is to “put off” our thoughts of this final test. If we do that we don’t learn the lessons of life God tries to teach us on a daily basis.  If we place ourselves before our God daily, consider what He already knows: our struggles, our failings and our triumphs. And we spend some time listening to Him, He can make corrections before we become horribly off course.    “Keep yourself steadily faced by the judgment seat of Christ; walk now in […]