Learning How to Live, Part 1

So, based on the time I have, I can quickly see we'll need a part two, or I'll have to do something else. Today, the title is, Learning How to Live. Learning How to Live. This happened several weeks ago. In fact, it might have been months ago. My wife and I were sitting in the backyard on our deck, looking out over beautiful Lake Gladewater. Relaxing, reflecting on the day and the week when the topic of conversation turned to how families ought to be close and spend time together. She stated that when she was growing up, that her grandparents lived in the country, and on Sundays, the extended family would go out to Grandma's house.

The kids played with the cousins, and the adults sat around on the porch, had a swing on the front porch. There's a country song, if we all had a swing on the front porch. Though we did back then. In fact, the place where we've just bought has a front porch, and we got a swing on the front porch.

But it has not yet been hung, but as they say, Lord willing, it will be. Occasionally, the kids would come on the front porch, they'd get a hug from Grandma, and they'd go back out and play some more. And I guess you'd say, well, it's naive to think that this kind of family reaction and interaction can be recaptured.

One thing is for sure, the importance of this kind of family interaction cannot be overestimated. It is so very important. We live in critical, crucial times. The world is becoming a more chaotic and confused place every day in every way. In order for children to develop a sense of identification and emotional bonding with family members, they must spend time together.

I'll give you a real-life example. I grew up in a very close-knit family community. My grandfather moved into that area of southeast Mississippi in the late 1880s, and he developed what would be called a general store. That general store had, along with it, a grist mill, a cane mill. They produced the corn mill, the syrup. It was sort of a self-contained kind of community. Twice a year, he would go to New Orleans and he would replenish his supply.

Virtually everyone in the community were from the English family. This is my mother's side of the family. So I grew up in a community where nearly all the neighbors were related to each other. We all went to the same missionary Baptist church. My closest friends and closest playmates were my three first cousins. They were boys who were just about my age. We played together every opportunity we got. We went fishing together. We learned how to swim on our own. I wonder if we hadn't drowned.

One of these cousins, the oldest one, almost did drown one day. I happened to see him. He was out at my grandfather's pond. He was bobbing. I think he'd already gone down and come up. I hollered to my dad, who was an excellent swimmer, and he went out and rescued him. An assembler kind of thing happened with my... excuse me... had a bit of a cold this week. My youngest brother, he was drowning, and I was like froze.

And I hollered to one of our neighbors. His name was Bolly Maxey, and he went out and got him. So that's the kind of community I grew up in. We played basketball and football and baseball. Everything that was in season, but there are only three sports, and those were the three. But there was one significant difference between my cousins and I. That was the interaction of our father with us. Their dad, my uncle Bill, named William English, was a Baptist preacher.

He apparently thought that an idle mind was indeed the Devil's Workshop. So he always had a string of work laid out for the boys to do. When we would go over there, we first maybe had to shovel the manure out of the barn, or we had to fix the fence, or we had to do something we would hope we would get through in time to play a little bit of what we wanted to really do, or go fishing before the day is over.

There was no time for anything but work and religion. By the time these boys were in their early teens, they had already left him and the family basically emotionally. They wound up, he went to pastor a church out of the area that we grew up in, and after being there for a while went to pastor somewhere else, but the boys stayed behind.

They lived with other families their last few years of high school. In contrast to that, I'm not saying my uncle, he was a fine man. He was hardworking and all those kinds of things, very devout in what he knew. But there was a great difference between how he interacted with my cousins and the way that my dad interacted with me. My dad, he went to church every Sunday, but he was not a religious man.

In fact, the one or two times they called on him to give the closing prayer at the end of services, he jabbed my mother in the ribs and she gave the closing prayer.

Public prayer was not his thing.

Several Saturdays, we would either walk or sometimes we'd get on my old bicycle and I would sit on the crossbars. We'd pedal down to the creek, which was about two and a half miles away, where we would beat the creek banks all day long in hope of a bite. We got more mosquito bites than we did fish bites, but we'd probably come home with nine or ten little perch, something about like your hand.

That was really great, though, as some of the most memorable days of my life. So many parents lose their children by not making the time to interact with them on their turf.

We had to work hard for what we had. We didn't have all the modern conveniences, as they say.

Supposedly, these modern conveniences should make more time for you to spend with your family. I remember how happy we were when we were able to purchase an electric refrigerator, an electric stove, and a washing machine. And we were astounded when the world went to a 40-hour work week. That really didn't affect me very much because my dad worked in town 40 hours a week, and I worked oftentimes six days a week on the farm. But along with that, but along with these conveniences came a Babylonian economic system that began to gobble up the lives of our people throughout the U.S. And, of course, this spread to Europe, and virtually it is now worldwide. Of course, the underdeveloped nations don't have these problems, but much of the world has these problems. Other inventions came along rapidly that began to turn our world upside down. Some were beneficial, some had a very negative effect on our culture. Perhaps the most damnable and culture-changing invention of the 20th century was blank. I'd say it was the television set. But television and the internet have, to a large degree, replaced our interaction with each other.

I'm amused. I go to restaurants now, and here come in, and this really happened several months ago. We went to this restaurant in Longview. We sat down and then comes in a man. He looked like he was probably in his 40s, and he had six or seven teenagers with him.

They all sat down, and as soon as they sat down, they all got out the telephone. They started texting away. They got someone sitting right beside them, but they are texting outside, somewhere else. What is the most exciting thing about the movie? People have come to believe, I guess, it's far more exciting to stare at the tube and watch the Sunday movie.

This goes way back to my day when I was at that age. It's more exciting to watch the Sunday movie or to watch the proteins on the tube than it was to visit MAMO and PAMPO.

Far more exciting to watch the St. Louis Cardinals or the Chicago Cubs or the Chicago Bears on television than it was to watch the local baseball team. For those of you who are somewhat in my age category, if you want to cross, in fact, it was a whole nation, but especially the South, in the 50s and 60s, virtually every little town in Hamlet had what they would call a semi-pro baseball team. But of course, you don't see any of that today. You see slow-pitched softball, shooting ducks in a barrel kind of thing, but it's all right.

It's a very poor substitute.

Television is now the... and sociologists disagree to some... and somewhat. Television is either the first or second greatest socializing force in our culture. Now, what do you mean by socializing force? Socializing force is that which teaches you how to interact with the society, those round about you. So, with the advent of television, we were now tuned into the world. We could go places that we had never been, see things that we had never seen, hear things that we'd never heard. We had now arrived, but in the process, we nourished our lust and starved our souls.

And today, our life essence, our life potential, is surely being starved.

Material things cannot fill the holes in the souls of human beings. Material things cannot fill the holes in the souls of human beings. In Luke 12 and verse 15, Jesus Christ is the spokesman here.

And He said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness.

For a man's life consists not in the abundance of the things which he possesses.

A man's life does not consist in the things that he possesses.

And then the Apostle Paul, writing Colossians 3 and verse 5, states that covetousness is idolatry. We now live in a world that is filled with paradoxes.

The paradoxes of this age dictate our life. So, I am going now to list these paradoxes. This is not an exhaustive list, but I have 30 or 40 things here.

The paradoxes of this age. We have taller buildings, but shorter tempers.

It might be that you would want to jot down a word. Just one word would be a key word you might want to pursue. Taller buildings, shorter tempers. Wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints.

We think that we are so sophisticated and so free today, but virtually everyone parrots the same thing. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less.

We have bigger houses and emptier lives. More conveniences, but less time.

Why do we have less time if we have more conveniences? We have more degrees, but less common sense.

More knowledge, but less judgment and wisdom. More experts, but more problems. It seems that there is some kind of a statistical relationship between experts and problems.

The more you have of experts, more problems. More medicine, more hospitals. I cannot believe the hospitals in the Houston area. I cannot believe the hospitals in Tyler and Longview. I mean, we used to have a steeple on every corner. Now we have a clinic. More hospitals, but less wellness.

Almost everyone is sick. We drink too much, smoke too much, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values.

We talk too much and lie, as in not telling the truth, too often.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, they say, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. I accidentally ran into what you would call our next door neighbor one day this week. Quite a pleasant fellow. Now you could say, he should have come and welcomed me to the neighborhood. One lady did. On the other hand, you could say, you should have gone and introduced yourself, which I should have done. Of course, you have to chase him down, but you can do it. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things.

We've tried to clean up the air, but we haven't tried to clean up our polluted souls.

We've split the atom, but not our callouslessness.

We write more, but learn less, yearn for more, but accomplish less.

We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We have higher incomes, but lower morals.

More food, but less satisfaction. We build more computers to build and hold more information, to produce more copies than ever. But when all is said done, we have less face-to-face communication.

Technology is cold and sterile. Technology tends to isolate.

I've seen this witness with my own grandson come to visit.

When he was younger, he had this little handheld thing that had about 49,000 video games on it. He'd get out of the stairway and stay there all day long. We're back there talking whatever we're doing. Then he got a computer. Same thing, just a bigger screen.

The times of fast food and slow digestion.

Taller men, shorter character. Steaper profits and shallower relationships. More talk of peace, but actually more war.

More leisure and less fun. More kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are the days of two incomes, but more divorce.

Of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are the days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that will do everything from cheer to quiet to kill. And many of them kill.

In a time in which there's much in the show window and nothing in the stockroom. In short, we've learned how to make a living, but now how to live. One of the great mottos of the Master's College, and hence should be a carryover in the Church of God, was learning how to live and learning how to make a living. To recapture true values and to put those into action in your lives. We've added years to life, but not life to years. So many of our elderly people live out those last few years, lonely, isolated, in nursing homes, more years of life, but less life in years. So are you a victim? Obviously, I'm a victim of some of these paradoxes. I would think you are too. If so, how can we learn how to live and begin changing the paradoxes of our lives? So here are some prescriptive steps.

People need structure and routine in their lives. Do you have structure and routine in your lives?

What do these things do? What do structure and routine do? It gives you a sense of security and stability. You need a routine to help learn responsibility. Growing up, my parents had a routine that I could absolutely count on. At 5.30, the alarm clock went off. I was in a different room. I didn't hear it every morning. My dad got up, and he made his way to the barn, which was about 200 yards away or more. He went there to milk the cow. Rain, shine, of course the sun was not up.

Rain or shine, so were sleep. Whatever they say about the postman, he went milk the cow. You have to milk cows. You don't have to. We found out at the college that you could milk them six times a week instead of seven. But anyhow, seven days a week, mother then would get up, and she would start breakfast. By the time he got back from the barn, breakfast would be ready. This would be somewhere around 6.15. Then the call would come to me and my brother come to breakfast. And of course, to roll out a kid and get him to breakfast at that time was sometimes challenging, but we were there. I also had a routine when school was out.

Since breakfast was over, I headed to the fields.

So, daddy did this, mother did this, my brother did this, and I did this, and we knew what was coming. Every day of the week, Sunday was the only day that was different.

We got up a little bit later, but we always went to church twice on Sunday.

So, God is looking for men and women, boys and girls, today to stand in the gap before Him in preparation for His Second Coming. God is looking for parents.

Parents who are willing to provide sacrificial love to their families.

Parents who are willing and able to see through this facade of this world that has enslaved our peoples in such a Babylonian kind of society. God is looking for people who will give themselves up so others can grow and succeed. God is looking for young people who courageously seek to honor their parents and their Heavenly Father. So, once again, these questions are similar to the sermon I gave about growth. Do you have a plan for growth?

Do you have time set aside each day to talk to your children so they can share with you what is going on in their lives? Is there a time? They say that the average family has about seven minutes of communication each day. Seven minutes out of 24 hours.

Do you know what your children are thinking? You may think you do, but I seriously doubt that any parent in here really knows what their children are thinking because they live in a world that even you, even those of you who are around 30, especially those of you around 40, even you who are young in that sense, you don't really know what this world is like when you're out there in the public arena. Do you know what their hopes, their goals, and their dreams are? Have you talked to them about it? Do you set aside a time that you can share with them your wisdom? This would include Bible study and study of principles drawn from various disciplines. Do you have like a book that you would assign? I know back when I used to have the studies with our girls, my wife and I, we would assign a book sort of like the the Women's Reading Club and along with various biblical principles, we would discuss principles from that book and about life.

You know, God is looking for you and me to take a stand in such a time as this. Let's go to Ecclesiastes 4 verse 12. Ecclesiastes 4 verse 12. I said Ecclesiastes. I mean Esther. Quite a difference. Esther chapter 4, just before the book of Job, we find Esther.

The story here is of the evil Haman who's hatched a plot to kill the Jews.

Esther's uncle Mordecai hears about it.

And in the meantime, Esther has become queen of the land. I won't go into that story.

She's a young woman, maybe somewhere between 18 and 21 years of age.

The king hadn't called for her in quite a long time, but Mordecai challenged her to go to the king and plead the case of her people, that is the Jews, to the king. So picking up in Esther 4 verse 12, and they told to Mordecai Esther's words, that is, I'm afraid to go because the king hasn't called for me. So let's read verses 10 and 11.

Again, Esther spoke unto Hetotch and gave him commandment unto Mordecai, all the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces do know that whosoever whether man or woman shall come into the king into the inner court and who is not called, there is one law of his to put him to death except such to whom the king shall hold out the golden scepter that he may live. But I've not been called to come into the king in 30 days.

And so they told Mordecai Esther's words, and Mordecai commanded to answer Esther, Think not with yourself that you shall escape in the king's house more than all the Jews.

For if you altogether hold your peace at this time, then shall their enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place. But you and your family's house, your father's house, shall be destroyed. And who knows whether you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this? Have you been called to the Church of God with your situation, your circumstance, for such a time as this? We all have different situations and different circumstances that we have to deal with, we have to cope with. And sometimes we, and I would say to a large degree, situation and circumstance are the two things that tend to master our lives today instead of us being the master of our lives.

Proverbs 22.6, let's go there, is just as true today as when it was written. So there is such a great difference between the agrarian society of biblical times and the days in which we live. An agrarian society in which you lived on the farm, in which those things basically that you would build your own house, you would make your own clothes, you would grow your own food, you would grow your own livestock, all of those things you participated in and you grew up with that. Quite a different world.

Children today hardly even know that milk comes from cows.

You know, even several years ago we recruited when I was coaching college sports, we had, in fact, one year on the baseball team, we had five guys from New York City.

So one time, and this was a little bit earlier than that, but the same school, recruited guys from the north and in the Delta they grow a tremendous amount of cotton, at least they did then. Now it's mainly soybeans and rice and corn. But anyhow, and of course we called them Yankees. These Yankees went out in the cotton field. They started picking this cotton, trying to eat it. Now if you've ever tried to eat cotton, you know that's quite a chore.

Proverbs 22 and verse 6, train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

So we need, this train up some translations and some say the meaning more accurately, and I think it is correct, is to thoroughly catechize. And I was a parent mentioned to me recently that they were going to develop a catechism, as it were, for their children. The Catholics say, give us your child for the first five years of life, and they always be a Catholic. They do have a catechism, and of course they have multiple private schools, both preschool, elementary, middle school, secondary, colleges, universities, and all of that all around the world, and the United States is filled with them. And no matter what argument that you present, I mean we had Catholics remember on our sports teams. Sometimes I get in a deep conversation with them, and it would always come back. That very line, their closing shot to me would generally always be, I was born a Catholic, and I'll die a Catholic. And I didn't say anything else. So we need to understand how important it is to teach very relevant and very personal things so that our children will know what is happening, and so we will know what is happening with them. We need to understand how attitudes are formed. You know, we all walked according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now works in the children of disobedience.

That's the way that our children are going to walk, unless we do what we need to do.

So we need to understand how attitudes are formed, the role of the peer group.

What is our role? What role is media playing in forming attitudes in the behavior of our children?

Can we teach our children to see and understand the purpose of life? I mean, the purpose of life, that's where it is. Do you understand why you were born? Why you're here?

Quite as so many churches of God you've leave the church after high school. I just had that experience.

My last pastorate, I mean, we had wonderful young people. I suppose they're still wonderful. You know, we would have these Bible bowls in Fort Worth, and two or three times they place first.

I guess the next time second or whatever. But knowledge within itself, that doesn't do it. You could quote the whole Bible. It has to do with conviction, commitment, and courage.

Do you see the big picture, and can you help young people understand the big picture?

Why do our youth dress like the world? Why do they listen to the same music, etc.?

We could go on with the why-dos.

To a large degree, it's because you haven't taught them the difference. And to a large degree, you're involved in the same thing.

So can we teach our young people how to relate and talk to adults, to the brethren, to look them in the eye? We have to somehow reach the hearts and minds in a way that youth are committed on a level that exceeds intellectual ascent.

You know, most teenagers who attend our service say, well, I know the Sabbath is on Saturday. I know you're not supposed to eat unclean food, and I know this and I know that.

But it has to go a lot deeper than that.

Let me read here what this fellow writes. I can't believe it's four o'clock, but anyhow.

This guy, his name is Jim Shishow.

He writes some very insightful blogs a little bit about him.

He's a retired sheriff with 46 years of law enforcement service. He served with the United States Army with the occupation forces in post-war Berlin.

A total of nine years of military service.

His law enforcement service includes three years in the military police, 15 years as an Iowa municipal police officer, 28 years as the duly elected sheriff of Sioux County, Iowa.

Here are some excerpts from one of his most recent blogs.

We have spread the seeds of evil unto other nations and have exported corrosive values and practices.

Our entertainment industry has propagated a sole searing and perverse influence through films, music, and electronic games. All of which advance and encourage promiscuous sex, drug use, gratuitous violence, unnatural acts, and occultist practices. Watch the cartoons that the kids watch sometimes. You want to know something about the occult.

Surely we are an international propagator of sin.

We have corrupted our children and allowed our schools and institutions to indoctrinate them with socialist doctrine, ignorant political correctness, and existential teachings.

In short, existential teaching is to decide for yourself what is good and what is evil.

The fundamental educational curriculums, the basics, have been replaced by political and social indoctrination. Our kids may not be smart, but they sure do feel good about themselves.

We deny the sovereignty of the Eternal, blaspheme His name, mock His word, reject His justice, dishonor His Son, then have the audacity to invoke His blessing upon our nation.

He is Lord and will not be mocked. We ought to tremble in fear in the face of His power.

His power and might, and drop to our knees in shame and repentance.

You know, the situation that we face today, really we don't have to have one who writes a blog in today's media to know the situation we would face today. Turn to 2 Timothy 3. The prophecies are very clear.

And the message is very clear. The only hope that any of us have, young or old, is to turn to God and to have Him envelop us in His cocoon, in His womb as it were.

The church is oftentimes referred to in the mother role.

2 Timothy 3.1. This know also that in the last days perilous time shall come.

For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful and holy, without natural affection. 3. Truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traders, heady, high-minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God.

4. Having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof from such, turn away.

So these things were prophesied, and this is not the only place. This is one of the most succinct summaries that you can find in the Bible. So we have opened the door here in our introduction today, and we'll continue this next week on learning how to live. We will get into next week the last two verses of Malachi about the work of Elijah and our role in doing the work of Elijah. And we will also relate it to the title today, Learning How to Live. So in the week that lies before us, let's all determine that we're going to set aside time to really explore where we are, where our family is, where our children are, and begin to have that kind of interaction, that kind of love, care, and concern that will build relationships and memories that people can hold on to, no matter what the storms of life are bringing, no matter what is going on in this world. We have an anchor. We have a rock. We have a place of refuge, a place that we can flee to, no matter what the situation or circumstance is. That is the rock of ages. So let's cling to him.