What Will We Find in 2010

What do you expect to find in the year 2010? We're nearly three weeks into this year. Two weeks, actually. A little more than two weeks now. On a calendar basis, though God's annual calendar doesn't begin in the middle of winter, we are tied to this midwinter changeover in a number of ways, financially and calendar-wise. So it is an interesting time to at least note a few things as the calendar turns in the world. What do you think will define this year's news? What will the world and what do you and I expect in 2010?

Just this week, we witnessed another one of those natural disasters that defy the imagination. As it unfolds, it will rip at us in many different ways. Yet, because of where it happened and the nation that it happened to, it has its own peculiar set of complications. The nation of Haiti is really the orphan of the Western world. When you look at it, know its history, know the problems that they have had. Quite frankly, you and I weren't thinking too much about Haiti before the middle of this week.

It's just a nation that just isn't on anyone's radar screen. It is a very, very impoverished nation in the Caribbean. You don't hear of people going to Haiti for their second home, for a romp on the beach, for a feast of tabernacles. When you turn on the HG television, the home shows, you don't see people from New York, San Antonio, or Houston going down and buying their beachside home in Haiti. I haven't seen that yet. I don't know if anyone has. It could be mistaken. It is really an orphan nation of the Caribbean and really of the Western world. Nobody has ever really cared about Haiti. It gained its independence in 1804 when they threw off the colonial yoke of the French.

It was nothing more than a slave colony. Sugar cane was their main traffic. They were among the first nations to throw off the colonial yoke of any Western power. But nobody recognized Haiti. Nobody paid them any attention. The United States didn't until after its own civil war. Brazil didn't until 1888, one of its neighbors. Reason? Because the other major countries had slave colonies in the other Caribbean nations, and they didn't want to create any unrest on the economic scale for their economies. So Haiti was left to flounder. In the 20th century, it's just moved from one corrupt government to another. It is a very, very sad story.

They've had their own share of their problems as well. But those people who have left Haiti and immigrated to the United States, we actually do have some members in New England. Two of their boys would come to our camp in camp heritage over the years. So I know there's one family in the United Church of God in New England that are Haitian. I do not think and was told yesterday we don't have any United Church of God members in the nation.

But back in the world wide, we did. I don't know what has happened to them if perhaps the Living Church of God has a small contingent there, perhaps, with Mr. Apartian. I don't know. But I do know we don't have any United presence there in the nation.

But you just recognize the tragedy that it is, and it will take millions, if not billions of dollars, to recover in many years from what has happened here. And along with, hopefully, you hope some wise stewardship, something can be done. You would hope and pray that a strong core of leadership would emerge and some wise policies would follow on from that to rebuild something of a decent life for those who remain in that nation.

I started to say that many of the Haitians who have come to America are quite inventive, quite contributing, and members of society in that sense, they have done well. And it's sad that the homeland has not been able to have been developed over the last couple of centuries because of what is there.

It is a very, very sad situation. And so it will have probably a long-term impact in many ways beyond what we can even see right now. I don't know if we would make a donation. We might consider that through the Red Cross. And I would certainly encourage, if anybody wants to make a donation to any relief effort, that you do so. You can even do it just by texting on your phone.

Just understand it's not going to go through until you pay your bill when you do it that way, but it can be a painless and convenient way to make a donation if you choose that particular method. But that's the more recent one. 2010 will also see the ongoing unfolding and, we hope, gradual improvement of a global financial crisis and a pulling out of a recession in the United States, hopefully a lowering of the unemployment rate, which is about 10% nationwide, higher in some areas.

We hope that that will begin to abate and lessen its impact upon our pocketbooks and the overall American economy. No matter how that has impacted you and I, we still see that it is an ongoing issue within the country. And depending on who you read, it may get a whole lot worse before it gets better. I don't know. I don't get into the prognostications. On January 6th, there was an article that I ran across that came out of the Houston Chronicle. The title caught my eyes while I went to it. It said, We owe, we owe, staring into the spending abyss.

We owe, we owe. And it had an interesting point to it. It had the usual statistics, which economically can kind of bore you.

It said here that if you have a mind to see for yourself, you can go to this website called www.usdebtclock.org for a jarring representation of just how fast the deficits and the budget deficits of the United States are both growing. You can see the dollar digits change at an eye-crossing blur on both a budget deficit and the national debt. u-s-debtclock.org. And then it gives the usual litany of the budget deficits, which are continuing to soar and go up and up and up. But it is continuing to grow, and it's getting to the point where it could create, and if it doesn't stop, it will create a national emergency.

But it says the alternative is looking more and more like a plunge into the abyss. It greatly weakened America and an ever more dangerous world. And that's really the bottom line. The growing national debt, the budget deficit that we continue to compound, and if the health care situation goes through, that is before Congress, it will add to that. But I don't want to get into that subject. But the bottom line, and this is a common line that I find, as I read so many of the various articles on the subject, is that if it doesn't turn around, it's going to reach a point of no return, and there will be America's place in the world economically will be greatly weakened in a very, very dangerous world.

And I've said many times before, if we get to the point where we cannot get this under control, we are in danger of losing our preeminence with the dollar as the reserve currency of the world, and that would create a whole new situation. But it is an ongoing issue that has been with us now for the better part of the last two years.

And we don't know exactly all the different twists and turns it's going to take, but it is something that we see, and some of us see more clearly, because of an impact on our jobs. Locally, it seems like we have weathered it fairly well. I know that there has been at least one case of unemployment. I know some of you have had work slowdowns and furloughs on your job because of issues.

But we have, by and large, through at least this area in the congregations here in Fort Wayne and Indianapolis, managed it fairly well. But when you and I look at it, no matter where we find ourselves in the economic picture, 2010 should be and may well turn out to be, and it could be, a pivotal, if not a positive year, depending on how we handle our finances and look at ourselves. It should be, and it could be, if we look at it wisely, a year to get out of debt. It could be a year for you and I to look at getting our financial house in order to save a bit more, to pay down and reduce the debt. Certainly, don't follow the example of the federal government, because you and I don't have the luxury of printing money to finance our debt, and China's not going to float you and I alone. So, it's just not going to happen. But if we can manage ourselves in that way. Now, I did, in some of my readings, recently come across a book. I didn't buy the book. It started to, and I thought, no, I'm not going to make this guy wealthy by buying his book.

But it was written by an economist, and basically his premise was that we'll get through this. This is just a little blip. And that the world is going to come out of this crisis, that the long-term trend is up globally for prosperity worldwide. We will see, according to this author, another global expansion that will dwarf anything we have seen thus far. That this trend of growth has only been interrupted in the last couple of years, but it will resume in other parts of the world. Asia, Latin America, Europe. Now, I looked at that, and I look at Bible prophecy, for instance, and I do know that Bible prophecy does indicate that a global power is going to arise, and there's going to come a world power that is concentrated in one force that will dominate world trade economically. And at the same time, America's role is going to be radically changed through this power shift, a decline of the dollar, probably. And debt will be the two factors that will reduce American power and influence at some point.

The Bible talks of a period called Jacob's Trouble, which Jeremiah describes as likely to be an economic type of bondage that will severely redefine our society and the societies of those who are the descendants of the patriarch Joseph. That may be well taken shape in front of our eyes, but through a trend that may be a few years yet down the road becoming full blown.

The fact is, you and I have advanced warning of this, and the fundamental themes of Bible prophecy really alert us to the developing trends that are shaping the future. This author is probably right. There's going to be a time of future prosperity that will lift the world even beyond what it has been in the last 10 to 15 years called globalization, but something even greater.

That's what the Bible describes. What part of it we in America will share in is yet to be determined, but we see what Bible prophecy tells us. The warnings that we get from Bible prophecy not only are a message for the world, but also it should be a message to the individual members of the church to position ourselves spiritually and physically to handle the shifts of events. To be able to see and understand what is taking place. There's another item that could be shaping and will likely shape the world in 2010. That's the continuing development of the nuclear arms race in the Middle East, particularly in Iran with its desire to develop a nuclear weapon.

With the turning of the calendar to this month, 2010, Iran is closer to becoming a nuclear state. They have rejected every overture from the West. The United States and the West made four different overtures last year in an effort through diplomacy to get Iran to back off of its efforts to build and develop a nuclear weapon.

They have ignored every one. The last one just expired at the end of December. They continue on toward nuclear armament. When that day arrives, which is going to, and it will be much sooner rather than later, the entire Middle East equation is going to be changed. Israel, particularly the State of Israel, is watching it very, very nervously because they recognize the threats made by the Iranian leadership toward the State of Israel and Jews in general are real.

They don't take them lightly. Israeli leaders know that if they do not make an effort to take out Iran's nuclear facilities before it happens, that they would be at a very serious disadvantage. Frankly, most serious analysts expect Israel to make some type of a preemptive strike this year on Iran to take out any or all of their nuclear sites, their development sites, which some say would be impossible because they built them underground. They're hardened, and it would just be literally impossible.

I don't know all the intelligence data in regard to that. But even if they do make a strike, there's going to be a retaliation that will be against Israel through various other terrorist groups and Americans in the Middle East, especially American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, and probably a heightened increase of attacks in Europe and America coming out of Yemen. And these other locations that we have seen in recent weeks are also places where they're continuing hotbeds of terrorist activity. They say more bombers are on the way, that the one that tried to take down the airline on Christmas Day was just a trial run.

And that others are on the way, and that the United States obviously is a target. President Obama is discovering that he is not the king of the world. The world does not look at him in that sense, and that really, quite frankly, most other nations, especially the Islamic nations, really don't like him any more than they did George W.

Bush. And that is becoming a very hard reality politically and on the international scene. So, what will the world find in 2010? Maybe this year will be one of those years of decisions that world history kind of turns on. There was an article that got me to thinking about this written by a classical historian and commentator. His name is Victor Davis Hanson. Some of you may have heard him or read him on a regular basis.

He's a professor at the University of California Davis campus. And he wrote a piece on January 7th this year called 2010, or Year of Decision. And being a classical historian, he went all the way back to the year 480 BC and showed how that was a critical determining year back during the Greek and Persian period of conflict. Then he came forward to the year 69 AD. I don't think any of us remember 69 AD too well. But that was when the Roman Empire was tottering on its foundations, and it was also the year that Jerusalem was sacked by the Roman armies.

But it was a pivotal year as well. Then he comes into the modern world, and he mentions 1939, just the year that World War II began. And the interesting year about 1939 was that it followed years of bad ideas like serial appeasement of Hitler and the near disarmament of Western democracies. And that led up to World War II. Then he comes forward to 1979. This was the end of Jimmy Carter's presidency just before Ronald Reagan was elected. And a number of years of malaise and problems at that particular point in time and a crisis in confidence that created another year. That was the year of the Iranian Revolution in Iran, global energy crisis, and others.

So he has a view of these particular years, at least the last one being 1979. Some have even looked at 1988 when the Berlin Wall fell. It's a pivotal year as well. But his final point is that 2010 may turn out to be a similar year of destiny. In 2009, the United States gave Iran four deadlines to stop its nuclear program. All were ignored. It doesn't embolden theocracy to believe this now is the year to become nuclear and change the entire strategic makeup of the Middle East. He goes on to mention a number of other issues.

He concludes in his last paragraph. He says that in 2010, our year of decision, events may come to a head and overwhelm the existing American-led global order unless President Obama can galvanize Western allies to meet the mounting danger. He mentions that we are facing and looking at a floundering and confused United States at this point, and particularly other nations see us that way because of decisions that have been made. That is critical as people gauge what type of reaction America might have to certain provocations that they would make. This was written before the earthquake in Haiti, which is a natural disaster of great importance.

Sometimes it's the unknown, the unseen event, and at times even a natural disaster like that, which can be a trigger point for pushing a building problem beyond the point of no return. Again, this situation in Haiti will take attention, even U.S. troops and money. What impact that might have, if something else comes along economically and all, will be something to watch and to understand, especially in 2010. We can look at any number of other world and global events that would raise us concerns and questions, but that's really not the point that I want to dwell on here this afternoon because those things go on, whether or not you and I exist or regardless of what happens in our daily lives.

What's generally most important to you and I is what's going on in our neighborhood and in our neck of the woods on any given day, in any given month or season, in any given year. Really, the most important question for you and I to consider for a few minutes here this afternoon is, what will you and I find in 2010?

What will your year and my year in 2010 be like? Will it be successful in any way or in every way? However it winds up in the coming months, it will largely depend on you and I and the decisions that we make, as it always does. As I said, that's what you and I are really most interested in and should be in one sense. While we keep our one eye on the larger world and the trends that are shaping up there, as God tells us to do, to understand those times, but with the intent, really, most of all, of bringing it back down to our lives, to spur us to make sure our house is in order, our lives are right before God.

And that by the grace of God, we realize we go on in our lives and we're not stuck in a place like Haiti. We can sit down in our comfort here and have a comfortable service. We can watch the big game tonight, tomorrow, whatever our fancy might be. We have a job to go to on Monday. We turn on the lights and it works and we can get a glass of water from the faucet or if we really want to splurge a bottle of water from the refrigerator. Our life goes on and it's very, very comfortable compared to many, many others, whether they're in Haiti or even some other part of the world.

And that's really where we are, but that's what we should consider as we keep an eye there, to keep our focus and our attention here. Let me give you three areas. Let's talk about briefly three areas this afternoon to think about as far as our world in 2010 and where it will wind up, how it will develop. They follow along in one sense from these other larger news items that I've briefly mentioned.

Let's look first at financial. Let's look at money. We're all interested in money, aren't we? There was another article. I read lots of articles. This one was from the Washington Post on January 3rd this year. Another one of those articles that comes out at the time of the calendar turning as we were all focused on taxes, finances, things like that, New Year's.

This article was talking about a personal approach to financing from a spiritual or values-based approach. I just exerted part of it here. It says, Clearly the financial crisis, the larger national crisis, is a structural meltdown that calls for increased government regulation of banks and other financial players. We can argue with that one depending on your political bent.

But at its core, this is also a spiritual crisis. This is the most important. This was the lesson I took from this article. At its core, this is a spiritual crisis. More and more people are coming to understand that underlying the economic crisis is a values crisis. A crisis in values. And that any economic recovery must be accompanied by a moral recovery.

And that's true. One of the things that we should realize. We can scream all we want at the bankers and the Wall Street financiers. I had lunch with my uncle back in September. I went back to Missouri to visit with my family. I had lunch with some of my uncles and aunts. One of my uncles is a self-made person. He's not a... He may be a millionaire land-wise, but I don't think he is dollar-wise. He's well off. He's comfortable. He worked from nothing to earn it all.

He's invested with IRAs, mutual funds, and whatever else. He took a big hit, just like everybody else did in the recent months. We were standing around talking with my uncle and some of my cousins. We were talking after lunch that day. He started ranting about the bankers and the Wall Street people. Wall Street people that have robbed a common guy like me. He went on in that vein. You probably heard that.

You probably made that argument yourself. He went on in that for about five minutes. I'm sitting here listening to him. This is my uncle, Louis. I'm harkening back to conversations I used to hear when I was a kid in my grandfather's living room. With his brothers, who are now all dead. Everybody's... The talk that goes on like that. It's kind of a generational continuum, but his point was well taken. That's how he looks at it. Whether it's Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, as it was, any other financial house, Wall Street in general. It is a spiritual values issue. Those who were charged as the gatekeepers.

We can just use that term. Of the big money houses of American economic finance failed. Without going into all the other ins and outs of the political situations, but they were and they are the gatekeepers. There is a moral responsibility. Because of greed, mismanagement, incompetence in some cases. You could go right down the list. They failed. At the heart of that failure is a failure of values. No matter how you shape it, they were responsible. They are the guardians of Fermaine Street. They failed. They did fail. That doesn't mean that they're always held accountable.

Because they got their golden parachutes. Their year-end bonuses are still rolling out. That's another issue. This article goes on and says that any recovery must be accompanied by a moral recovery. This brings it down to really you and I once again. It goes on in this article, we've been asking the wrong question. When will the financial crisis end? Is the wrong question. The wrong question is how will it change us? How will it change us? You and I can rant all we want, along with my uncle Louis, about the Wall Street guys.

We can rant all we want all day long. We can't change them. It may change your investment strategies. That's your business and my business. But the right question, as they put it, is this. How will it change us? Any crisis we go through. How will it change us? This article goes on.

This could be a moment to re-examine the ways we measure success, do business, and live our lives. A time to renew spiritual values and practices, such as simplicity, patience, modesty, family, friendship. We could add in the Sabbath, the Holy Days, God's laws, God's way of life. Is this going to be a time when we renew these values and these practices and put their priorities higher in our lives than perhaps we have had them?

We in the church always need to be on guard and examining ourselves as to how we let those slip in terms of our importance and our relationships. That's the responsibility we have within the church in our calling to really challenge the idols of the markets, challenge the idols of the marketplace, and remind us who is God and who is not. This is really where it should change us. Psalm 24 and verse 1 says something we all know. Psalm 24 and verse 1 says, The earth is the Lord's in all its fullness. The world and those who dwell therein. The earth is God's and everything in it is fullness.

Now, we can read right over that, and we do, but do we really understand it? See, the earth does not belong to the marketplace, doesn't belong to Wall Street, doesn't belong to the Bank of America, doesn't belong to the World Bank. The earth does not belong to the International Monetary Fund. It doesn't belong to the United States, doesn't belong to China, doesn't belong to Russia. It says, The earth is the Lord's and all its fullness. That's the orienting feature. That's what we have to get focused on and oriented on and remember.

It does not belong to the market, does not belong to any economist. It belongs to God. We have to live and act as if we believe that. As if we believe that. And we know that. And we remember that. You see, we can forget that.

As we read our Wall Street Journal, we watch Fox News, we listen to Glenn Beck. We read this book. We read this expert. We get caught up in some theory, some bent of conspiracy approach in terms of world rule, world government, world economy.

We can forget a lot, very easily, any of us. As we get caught up in our efforts, our desires, us. We forget that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. We have to believe that and live that way. That is how we get ourselves oriented.

We have to call on God with this conviction. We have to pray to God with this conviction for every one of our needs, every single day. For all of those needs that you have, your neighbor has, the others that you're praying for, that we're striving to hold on to and manage and be good stewards of, we have to come from that point of view that it belongs to God and remember that.

God gives us a portion of it. We have our own portion that we've either inherited, come by whatever means, we've worked for, we've saved for, we've earned, we've managed. It's a house in the suburbs if it's on a lot or if it's with a few acres. If it's a few dollars in the bank, it's ours, and it's ours to manage wisely and properly. If it's a change in a piggy bank, or money in a savings bond, or in an IRA, or invested in whatever instrument, it's what we've earned, it's what has been given to us.

But ultimately, it all has come from God. For all of our needs and for all of those of the needs of the work of God, and for all of those who do as well, we have to come from that point of view. Our income of the church has been declining. It's below budget, below what we budget it for. We're going to have to make some hard decisions in the next few weeks as to how we finish out the year so we finish up with a balanced budget church-wise.

We budget it too high. Income has not met what we budgeted and projected for, unless things turn around. We get a report every week from the Treasurer's Office in terms of what the income is of the church. Long ago, I came to believe, and I've been tested on this belief a few times, continually, really.

I do believe this, in terms of the work of the church, I believe that God can give us all we need to do what we are prepared to do.

Back in the best days of the WCG, the worldwide Church of God, probably our income hit the $200 million mark at one point in the mid-1980s. $200 million would have been the high water mark of the total amount of income that we had. We had a worldwide work that we were financing with that. Keep that in mind. Big payroll, college, media work, and big operation. Since then, we know the story and we operate with a little bit more than 10% of that amount right now, in terms of an annual budget for the United Church of God.

I believe God can and does give us what we need to do, what we are prepared to do.

Because I believe Psalm 24 verse 1, the earth is the Lord's in the fullness thereof. He could give us more, but He doesn't. Just like He could give you more.

He could give me more, but He doesn't, does He?

Would it be, as Tanya said, would it break some vast eternal law?

If I was a wealthy man, we've prayed that many times, haven't we, to God? Would it break some little law of yours? Well, maybe not. I don't know. But He hasn't rained it down on me and most of you, it hasn't rained down on you. You've worked hard for what you have. He hasn't rained it on the Church.

I believe He gives what we need and what we're prepared to do.

He will not give us more than we're capable of using in a wise and right manner.

I believe that.

Now, are we prepared to use no more than $22-23 million in the United Church of God right now? Probably not. Probably not. So we don't have any more than that.

I look at that as a reality. Because I believe Psalm 24 and verse 1, I believe God can give us what we need because it's all His.

Some other churches, denominations, works have more. I was reading about Rick Warren. Everybody know who Rick Warren is? How many of you know who Rick Warren is? Yeah. I mean, if you don't know who Rick Warren is. Oh, that's interesting.

He's a big mega preacher. He's got a big mega church in Southern California. Purpose-driven life. Walmart. That's Rick Warren.

He doesn't own Walmart, but they help make him the best seller.

He was facing, just at the end of the year, he was facing a $900,000 deficit. And he made an appeal to his followers and got over $2 million. It came in.

Good. Good for them. That's all I can say. God knows how to bless us as a church, and God knows how to bless us individually as well. I believe he can give us what we need to do what we're prepared to do. He won't give us any more than we're capable of using in a wise and right manner.

If you and I had the wealth of Warren Buffett, you probably wouldn't be sitting here today.

You just probably wouldn't. You say right now, oh yeah, you would. Yeah, I would. I'd tie it. No, you wouldn't.

I probably wouldn't be here either if I had that kind of money. Because if I had that kind of money, I'd be doing something more than what I'm doing, obviously number one. But be honest with yourself.

Be honest with yourself. There's nothing wrong with that.

God has, I believe what this verse is telling us, is that God has a treasure chest waiting.

Waiting for us to find it.

He's even given us the treasure map.

It's not on the back of the U.S. Constitution either.

He's given us a treasure map. It's right in here. It's right in here. This is the treasure map.

Problems are we're not always reading it right.

Or we're not following it.

The laws that are laid down. So we can't expect God's rich blessing, both physically as well as spiritually, to follow.

This is the treasure map. And keep in mind that treasure map is both physical and spiritual.

A few years ago I came to that conclusion that he does have a treasure chest waiting for us individually and even for his work, his church.

We've got to use our resources that we do have in the right and in a godly manner.

Think about it this way. If the two great commandments Christ enumerated, love God with all your heart, love your fellow man with all your heart. Sums up the commandments. If those two great commandments are to love God and to serve man, we should use what God says is His.

You know what He says is His. You know how much that is. Then use that to love God, to fulfill the first four commandments. Conduct our lives and use our money to obey and honor God.

Then use what God gives us to use to love our fellow man, to fill our needs and to fulfill the second of the great commands.

Look at it that way and you've got a pretty good framework to begin using it in that direction, along that treasure map that God lays out.

Then you can pick up all the other tips and hints and ideas that you can come up with to work out your financial salvation.

Deuteronomy 16 and verse 5 is still a very good one, basically telling us to get out of debt.

God said to those that follow Him, I will make you a... you will lend to others rather than be a debtor. Deuteronomy 16 and verse 5, I won't turn there and read that.

We were talking a few weeks ago at the men's bowling outing and a lot of you have been reading David Ramsey, this financial expert who has a whole system of financial education, which can be very, very helpful and very useful. There are others on the marketplace, but Dave Ramsey seems to be a popular one today, both on television, radio, and with what he is offering. Find what works and make it work.

But the ones that do work will follow the treasure map, if you will, that are within the Scripture.

And so what will be the story for every one of us in 2010 in that regard? Begin to make some steps to make the plans and make it work along those lines now.

Let's look at a second area.

For 2010, and that is in our relationships. Two weeks ago, I gave a sermon called, Playing the Enemy, and I told the story of Nelson Mandela, in South Africa, and the lessons that he had learned and employed in resolving the conflicts and the political situation in South Africa in the mid-1990s to avert a civil war and massive bloodshed.

But it is a classic story, an example of conflict resolution. We went through the Scriptures there.

I come back to it just to refer to it and ask you the question.

What will 2010 bring for you in your relationships?

Let me make one challenge this year. One challenge to you.

Determine this year to resolve one conflict that's been in your life.

To resolve one conflict, whatever it might be.

You know what is facing you, with whom it may be.

Could be another church member. Could be somebody in your family.

Not in the church. Could be someone on the job. Could be someone across the street.

Determine this year to resolve one conflict. A second one might flow from that.

Let's say you're one of those rare people out here. You don't have any conflicts with anybody.

You will lie to yourself, that's fine.

Make this one your resolve. Set your mind to avoid creating any conflict this year. Set your mind to avoid creating any conflict this year.

Turn over to Romans 14.

Two weeks ago, I went through Romans 12, a few verses, and Romans 12 with you. But let's look at Romans 14.

Romans 14, beginning in verse 7.

In the midst of talking about another topic of liberty, Christian liberty, he really gets down to the heart of his point, and it's again relationship-driven. Romans 14, verse 7, he says, None of us lives to himself, and no one dies to himself. We have to interact with people. We don't live by ourselves. We have to deal with people, unless we just completely seal ourselves off, like Ted Kaczynski did in a remote Idaho cabin someplace. You don't see anybody except to build a bomb and deliver it to them.

But we have to deal with people. We don't live to ourselves, and we don't die to ourselves. For if we live in verse 8, we live to the Lord.

And if we die, we die to the Lord.

Therefore, whether we live or die, we are the Lord's.

We're gods. We belong to Him.

He has bought and paid for us by the blood of Jesus Christ.

We are His. So we can't operate independently. For to this end, Christ died and rose and lived again, that He might be Lord of both the dead and the living. But why do you judge your brother?

Why do you show contempt for your brother?

That's a strong, strong question Paul asks. Why do you show contempt for your brother? Why do we get to our thinking, evaluating, and evaluations of one another in our relationships where we have contempt?

Utter, vile, unbridled contempt.

Sad? I don't want anything to do with that person.

I don't want to be around them. I can't stand that person.

I hate hearing her prattle on.

Whatever it is that comes out where we show contempt, why do you show contempt?

For your brother. For we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.

For it is written, as I live says, the Lord every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.

Which is another way of saying we will have to come to a point of repentance and acknowledging those attitudes, and finally get our tongue confessing right things, as James talks about the tongue, and putting our words to confessing and praising God rather than showing contempt and violence for our brother.

So then each of us, verse 12, shall give account of himself to God.

Therefore let us not judge one another anymore, but rather resolve this, not to put a stumbling block or a cause to fall in our brother's way.

A very, very powerful section here within the section where he's talking about using our liberty on various issues, but not to where we create a problem and judge and undermine someone else.

Don't put a stumbling block.

So don't resolve this year not to create any new conflicts.

And if you have one or more, resolve this year to solving one of them, towards no longer a conflict.

The place to begin is in prayer to God, if no place else.

A third area for us to consider for this year again follows on from this, but it's our spiritual relationship.

Not so much with one another, but with God.

And the winter, which we're in the middle of right now, is a time to do it.

This is a period of dormancy in nature.

It's always a good lesson for each of the seasons to draw from them in regard to spiritual values and matters.

Dormant natural life doesn't mean necessarily there's a lack of life or there is even inactivity.

Nature is just resting in one sense and rebuilding for another year of growth.

You've got to have the winter dormancy to have the growth that comes in spring and summer.

There won't be any growth in that period of time if we don't have the dormancy of winter.

It's a time to rest, but not to do nothing, but to focus and to think ahead.

I always find it the best way personally to get through the winter months is by basically employing just one word.

Attack.

You have to attack life. You have to attack winter.

It came to me no more difficult than it means 27 years ago when I first moved to Indiana and experienced Indiana winter.

I came out of Tennessee, folks, so we didn't have a hard winter and it was a short winter in Tennessee.

I came to Indiana and there was a whole different picture.

I just went to LS Airs. Still had LS Airs in those days.

I bought me a long winter coat, wool coat, overcoat. Still have it.

Except when other people pick it up from church. Hahahaha!

It kind of wraps around your legs. Wool coat.

I could walk down the streets of Fort Wayne and any other town, place where I was and just, you know, get on with winter.

Nothing more complicated than that. You attack. You get into it.

You have to. Don't give in to the depression and the complacency that comes along.

And most importantly, use the time to focus on God.

Deuteronomy 6 is a scripture that I've been thinking about lately.

Any number of scriptures that talk about God could be effective, but I choose this one today. Deuteronomy 6 is a well-known scripture that is really a prayer, a blessing.

It's among the Jews. It's a banner of faith.

And you certainly, you want to look at it in terms of, it's not really so much a scripture that talks about the nature of God as it is a scripture that points us to God.

Without getting into the arguments about one God, two gods, fifteen gods, or whatever, the reality is God is saying to Israel, there's not a God for everything in nature.

There's one God, one family.

And we know the rest of the story on that, but that's another sermon on another topic. But it says in verse 4, and this is really how you should read it, it says, Here, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart.

God wanted Israel to love him, not the false gods of Molech and Canaan and all the other gods of the other nations. He wanted them to love him. And that's really at the heart of the story of the Old Testament. They didn't really grow to love him. That's what he wants, and he wants us to love him.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. It's a total immersion. It is a total relationship. It is a total love affair with God. Our God is a loving, kind, merciful, patient, all-knowing, powerful, compassionate God. Every superlative, every adjective you want to bring into a description of God, he is, and he's that and more. Every name of God from the Scripture that defines God as a healer, as a protector, as a defender, he is. And God wants us to understand that and to put our whole life in his hands, to put our total focus on him. To love him with all of our heart, unconditionally.

You ladies are going to be going through the book, I guess, in a couple of weeks on Redeeming Love, which is a take-off from the story of Hosea. Last week I just took a night and read through Hosea quickly just to read it as a book, not to study it so much. But because of that, I wanted to read it again. Just read through the book of Hosea.

The story is very simple, as you know, you ladies, you've read the book. God loves Israel unconditionally, even when Israel acted spiritually like a harlot. And he wanted that lesson so ingrained upon the people that he even raised up one specific prophet named Hosea, and he made him go and marry a prostitute. So he would learn the lesson so that his teaching and preaching to the people would reflect that aspect of God's unconditional and mitigated love for Israel, that regardless of how they reacted toward him, he still loved them.

Just like you and I as parents have to and do, and sometimes maybe struggle as if children don't reciprocate, but we have to love our children unconditionally. That's the job of being a parent. I was explaining this to someone the other day, that you have to love your child even when you're not there.

If through divorce, there are other circumstances, you're not with your child, you still have to find a way to show that love. Because that's what a parent does. That's what God does. And God wants us to, in turn, show the same unconditional love toward him.

And this is what Deuteronomy 6 here is just briefly getting at by the statement of loving with all of our heart, soul, and strength. And he goes on and says, These words which I command you today shall be in your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children. You shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down. When you rise up, you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they will be as frontlets between your eyes. You will write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

This is just really describing, you don't have to go to the level of putting it on the doorpost literally like practicing Orthodox Jews do. That's fine for them to do that, but you don't have to do that. And quite frankly, that's really not the ultimate application God wants us to do. I personally would not do it because I...

Not that it would be a sin if you did. That's not what I'm saying, but I wouldn't do it because I know that God's wanting us... Really, the big lesson here is God wants us to totally every day walk with Him, live our lives completely attached to Him. To see Him around every corner, around every turn. To come to a point where we come to a moment of decision, we come to a moment of need, come to a moment of hesitancy in our own life.

As mundane as it might seem, and we throw up the question in our mind toward God, God, what are You teaching me in this moment? What do I need to learn? As this person is talking to me, or as I'm about to go into this meeting, or make this phone call, or make this decision, God, what do You want me to learn here?

What am I supposed to be understanding? How am I supposed to be reacting here? We wonder what He is doing with us in that moment, with that person, with that event, as it's being brought into our life, or as we're going through. That's really what this section is talking about. You don't have to go tapping something on your door as you walk in and out, because that's how you relate toward God. That's the type of relationship that He wants. That's what He's talking about here. And in Acts 17, when Paul was before the philosophers in Athens, and he tried to explain to them who this unknown God, as he referred to it, really was.

And just to jump into verse 27 and 28 of this short message that he gave to the Athenians, Acts 17, verse 27, as he tries to explain this God to a group of Greek philosophers, he says, verse 27, Paul uses this language in 1 Corinthians 6 when he's talking about idol worship as well. In him we live and move and have our being, which is what Deuteronomy 6 is really saying in another way. As we live our life, we have our whole life and our whole being wrapped up with God.

When we sit down, when we go out, when we come in, His way is a part of our life. We live that way. We come to that point. In 37 years, I've been standing up before people, giving sermons and sermonettes and trying to explain God. And in recent months, through circumstances, I guess, I will share with you that these thoughts and these scriptures have taken on a completely different meaning because of experiences that I've had to go through.

Maybe it's preparing me for something else? I don't know. But these are the heart and core of the scriptures that should prepare each one of us, or a relationship with God, to live each day of our life, at whatever level of success and whatever we do. This is how God wants us to relate to Him.

He wants us to love Him and to think of Him, to be in a state of continual prayer, praying continually, as Paul would use that phrase, because that is our life and that is our breath and that is our food, in that sense. And we know we need to do that, and we come to the point where we want to do that, because we finally realize that that's the only way we're going to get through it alive.

And that's the only way to paraphrase Jim Morrison, we're going to get out of this world of life. I don't normally quote Jim Morrison, but he did have one comment that we might want to think about. This is the only way we're going to get out of this world of life, with the life of God.

And that is by coming to understand and approach God in that way. So what will you find in 2010?

Well, make it peace of mind. Make it peace of mind in regard to your finances, if you can. Begin to get that in order. Make it better relationships. But above all, make it a closer walk with God.