Continue in Him

Posted on August 3, 2018 by Don Merritt

And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.

1 John 2:28-29

I don’t know about you, but sometimes I sit back and think about everything involved in following our Lord and it all just seems a little overwhelming.  Thinking about who He is, what He is, His love for us, His call to us… and all of the implications of these things… Wow!

I don’t want to mess this all up!

Oh sure, I’m confident in forgiveness for sins, and I understand that He is loving, merciful and not interested in a “gotcha” moment, no that isn’t it at all; I don’t want to grieve Him or let Him down.  In the text we’ve been looking at, John seems to sense the same kind of thing.  He’s taken us through all of these amazing attributes, and he’s taken us through the facts of life in a spiritual battlefield, and now suddenly, he seems to take a little step back to survey the scene, and just as though he were reading my mind, he writes these two verses.

Wow!  What do we do now?  John’s answer is “continue in Him.”  Yes, that’s right; continue in Him so that when He appears we may be confident and unscathed by this world of ours.  By “continue in Him,” I think John means that we should simply keep on living in Christ’s image, as He taught us, doing what He did, following His Father’s purpose and not being distracted. We do know that He is righteous; so then, we do know that everyone who does right is born of Him.  By “right,” John must mean that they do the things that He would do, so while Jesus is the Model for all of us to follow, when those around us follow His model, we have someone to show us the way when we are confused.

Wow! Once again, the answer is simple, if not always exactly easy.

Yes, dear reader, let’s just continue in Him…

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I Have this Theory…

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Don Merritt

I know from the comments that many of you have gone down this same road that we have concerning nutrition, eating right and stewardship of our bodies; it can be a daunting task. With all of the conflicting “science”, not to mention the way that the standards and scientific evidence seems to change all the time; you know, something is healthy, then it isn’t healthy, then it’s good again.

It’s hard for the average person to know much of anything for certain.

I think that’s why so many find themselves flirting with conspiracy theories: “Those studies are rigged by big-business, special interests and government corruption. “ “The Truth that They Don’t Want You to Know”.

If you ask me, that’s just lazy thinking. No doubt some studies are more reliable than others, but all of those plots- I doubt it.

So, I’ve been trying to look at this whole subject another way…

From the first, I’ve framed this as a matter of Christian stewardship, so why not look at it from a more Biblical point of view and ask if there are clues in the Scriptures. We know two things right off: First, we know that God gave us the teeth of an omnivore; we can eat both plants and meats. We also know that when the first humans were created, God put them in a garden and made the fruit of all of the trees and the plants of the garden theirs to eat, except one: they apparently were plant-eaters when in God’s perfect environment, when Man stood naked and unashamed before God.

However, they were told to be fruitful and multiply, and to fill the earth and have dominion over all of the plants and animals in it.  We also know that the earth is very diverse in ecosystems, climate and terrains, and each has a different variety of foods available for human consumption. As people began to appear on the scene and move away from Paradise to fill the earth, they would need the ability to eat whatever was available to them in order to survive, and this was God’s original intention, even before the events of Genesis 3. After Genesis 3 however, even Adam and Eve were banned from the Garden, and had to survive as hunter-gatherers, and thus, we can conclude that God was very intentional in creating us to be omnivores.

In our little case study here, we considered two videos, each representing opposite approaches to nutrition. Both cite evidence supporting their approaches, and they appear at first to contradict one another, but if you think about it, that contradiction is only present if we assume that they must be mutually exclusive.

What if they aren’t?

If we think about God’s intention that we should fill the entire earth, and the diversity in food availability and conditions on the ground, and then remember that the first video which based its approach on the diet of Aboriginal people of Australia, and the second which looked at the rural peoples of China and the Philippines, and then consider the significant differences in those locations, why should we be surprised at the difference in diet? Why would we be surprised that even though they appear to be opposites, that they would both result in good health, when the subject, humans created by God, were designed to succeed and flourish everywhere?

Both “extremes” agree that the diet related health problems came from the intervention of modern Man into what God created to be perfect. If that is true, then wouldn’t the answer to the riddle center around the removal of those interventions, namely processed and artificial foods?

It seems to me that if we eliminate all processed and artificial foods from our diets, and stop overeating, we should free ourselves of the likelihood of diet-related health problems, reverse any that we have already which are reversable and gradually achieve the weight that is ideal for us. The only proviso that I would have to add to that is that we should be careful that what we eat covers the nutritional requirements of the human body, which is to say that if leafy greens are my favorite food, I’ll can’t eat only leafy greens− does that make sense?

Maybe this is way too simple, maybe I’m crazy, but at first blush it seems to make sense: what do you think?

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A Warning

Posted on August 2, 2018 by Don Merritt

So far in this letter, John has given us a reminder of the supremacy of Jesus Christ; who He is, what He is and His nature. John gave us a comparison and contrast of what the “Light” is, and who is and who is not “in the light.” Then John reminded us of who we are in Christ and how amazing that is.  In the previous section, John warns us not to love this world, and now John is taking us to the front lines on a battlefield, where it becomes plain why he has taken us on this journey to show us just who we are, and just who “they” are.

Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.

1 John 2:18-19

This is the first mention of the term “antichrist” in the Bible. It means someone who is against or in place of the Messiah.  In these verses, John mentions twice that we are in the “last hour,” which is interesting when you consider that many will suggest today that there are more hours to come.  Whoever these antichrists were, or are, they appear to have been hanging around us, and then to have gone rogue. If nothing else, in these two verses, we can be sure that these rogues were hanging around, but they were never “us.”  Recall the descriptions of in the light and in the darkness in vv. 1:5-2:11… These characters were the ones in darkness.

But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the antichrist—denying the Father and the Son. No one who denies the Son has the Father; whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.

1 John 2:20-23

Now we have a little more information: The rogues John is talking about deny that Jesus is the Messiah.  That is a bald-faced lie, and those who are in the truth would never make such an assertion, so these guys were not in the light. No person who denies that Jesus is the Messiah is in the Son, and if a person is not in the Son, they are also not in the Father.  They are antichrist, and there are many of those in the world.

As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—eternal life.

1 John 2:24-25

These two verses are the warming: Make sure that you hang on to what you know about Jesus Christ.  If you do, you will remain in Him and inherit eternal life. Do not listen to the rogues. By the way, this is why I said above that John has taken us to the front lines on a battlefield.  It is a spiritual battlefield in a spiritual war, where the antichrists in our midst will attempt to pry you away from the Truth.  Resist, and do not listen to their lies!

 I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray. As for you, the anointing you received from him remains in you, and you do not need anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you about all things and as that anointing is real, not counterfeit—just as it has taught you, remain in him.

1 John 2:26-27

John invokes the anointing of the indwelling Holy Spirit in urging us to remain in Christ.  Consider this: Here is a warning that there are those who try to lead us astray, to turn our backs on our Lord.  They are fighting against us in a spiritual war, and this can sound really scary.  Oh, it’s great in the movies, when their innocent victims are lured into evil by magical powers, having no way to resist.  Take heart! John is pointing out to you and me that we have within us, at our disposal greater firepower by tenfold: He is the very Holy Spirit of God, the third Person of the Godhead.  If we are focused on our relationship with our Lord, and we take these “battles” to Him, there isn’t even a contest, for “greater is He who is in me, than he who is in the world.”

One final thought and that’ll be it for now… You know all those stories and books and movies about evil forces that lead the righteous astray?  “The Exorcist” “The Omen” etc., etc…? They really freak people out, which is why they make so much money, right?  People become afraid, and being afraid becomes a distraction for some.  At the same time, you have in these verses a very simple way to discern who the liars and antichrists are; a third grader can understand it.  You also have a solution to defeat the lie that a third grader can understand: stand on the truth of the Word of God, and reject outright the lie.

As simple as this is, many will be so creeped out by the stories and the idea of spiritual warfare, that it almost makes me wonder if these stories of myth, legend and popular fiction are actually part of the lie itself, so that we won’t fight back, and our superior firepower will never be brought to bear on our foe.  Hmmm… do you think we need to have a healthy relationship with the Lord?

I do!

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Photo of the Week: August 2, 2018

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Don Merritt

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A Tale of Two Videos part two

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Don Merritt

Today I’ll be giving you my general impressions of the video Forks Over Knives, just like I did for The Magic Pill yesterday. Both are available on Netflix, and easy to find on Google.

Forks Over Knives Trailer

The Good

  • The video was well-produced, interesting and held my attention. If you watch it, you won’t be bored.
  • I thought the case studies were quite good, they were informative and believable; I didn’t walk away thinking anybody faked anything, and that doesn’t happen very often.
  • I was impressed by the fact that the main characters in the video were the same people who had conducted the majority of research that was cited, and that they were able to explain clearly what they had looked at and how they came to their conclusions.
  • The story in the video was based upon the people of rural China and the Philippines and how it was found that they did not suffer the same kinds of food-related illnesses that their counterparts did in the urban areas of those countries. Even better, after a huge study was conducted by the Chinese Government on this subject, one of the researchers in the video went to China and re-did the study, expanding it in scope and size to confirm the earlier results in coordination with his Chinese counterparts which made their findings all the more credible, in my view.

The Bad

  • At one point in the video they took us through a study that showed a relationship between the growth of two types of cancer and one specific animal protein and how the presence or non-presence of that protein had a major impact on the cancer, causing it to grow when present, only to have it shrink when absent, which I though was very interesting. However, later they made it sound like all kinds of cancer would be aided by the presence of any animal protein, and they didn’t show any evidence for that.

The Ugly

  • I constantly heard the term “plant-based foods” in the video (as opposed to “animal-based food”) and this may only bother me but, that sounds like they’re hiding something, namely the fact that their diet approach is vegan. If it’s vegan, why not just own it? Actually, the way I learned it is that the entire food chain is plant-based. It’s possible that I’m just a victim of my training here, having been a political writer for decades, but I’m always suspicious when people do this.

Where both sides agree

Both Keto and Forks Over Knives agree that:

  • Cancer, Heart Disease, Diabetes and Obesity are primarily caused by diet.
  • These killers can be very rare indeed in a society that eats properly.
  • Proper and healthy eating habits must exclude processed foods including processed fats, sugars, grains, and other highly processed items.
  • Both agree that if you follow the advice of the other one, you will die of one of these diseases.

To my way of thinking, both of these are extremes; I highly doubt whether or not either one can be sustained as a lifestyle choice for most people. Make no mistake however, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t hear them both out, because they both have valuable information that we can all use. For instance, why would we want to continue eating processed foods? Why wouldn’t we want to eat whole and natural food?

Everyone agrees that the one is problematic and that the other is very good.

I think there is a lot more for us to learn, so let’s get back together tomorrow and see what that might be.

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About This World

Posted on August 1, 2018 by Don Merritt

Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but whoever does the will of God lives forever.

1 John 2:15-17

Now that we are clear on who we are, and what the realities of life in Christ are, John turns to the world around us. John isn’t referring to the natural world, he’s referring to the world of Mankind; the culture, society, the impulses, the way things are here…  in this I don’t mean “culture” in the sense that John is speaking against literature or music or opera or culture in that sense, but instead the impulses and ways of people and society.  If we were to say that we live in a “dog eat dog world,” we would be referring to the impulses and ways of this world; that is more like what John is getting at. John is telling us that we are not to love the world or anything in it and if we do, we have a spiritual problem for sure.

The “lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life” are often cited as the three main categories of sin.  Clearly these do not come from God, for as John puts it, they come from the world. If you think about it, so much of what people consider important has more to do with impressing others than with anything else.  Why are we so often driven by career advancement?  Why do we need so much stuff?  Why is your living room fancier than your bedrooms?  Why do you need the fancy car instead of the economy car?  Must I spend $100.00 on a tie? Why do we want what somebody else has? Our knee-jerk answer to these kinds of questions might be “sin”, but John goes deeper than that; this comes from the world.  Jesus nailed the thought down when He said that we “prefer the praise of men.”

In the final analysis, this world, its ways, and everything in it will pass away, but the love of God endures forever. Our Lord showed us a life that was lived for the love of God.  Isn’t that where our love should be? I’ve heard people say that we are here to fix the world, but I must state clearly that this is a mistake. We were never commanded to fix the world, no− the world is passing away!  We are commanded to share the love of God through Jesus Christ with people, so that they may be saved from the world’s fate.

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A Tale of Two Videos part one

Posted on July 31, 2018 by Don Merritt

Introduction

To be fair, I want to mention a couple of things before I begin. First, I am not approaching this subject as an advocate of anything other than the Christian Etic of stewardship. You are entirely free to agree or disagree with my choices; I have no stake financially or otherwise in any of this. I’m simply reporting what I’ve found on a subject that we should probably consider seriously as stewards of our own bodies. Second, in comparing these two videos, I have a natural inclination in the direction of Forks Over Knives because I was influenced many years ago by reading Jane Body’s Good Food Book which advocates a high carbohydrate, low fat approach to nutrition, which the Keto proponents trash in their video. It has more or less been the way I have approached nutrition and menu planning for the last 30-plus years, and while I have not always followed closely, it has been my general way of looking at things.

Here We Go…

Getting started, I found the two documentary videos on Netflix, both are widely touted by their supporters, one that advocates the Keto approach to diet that is called The Magic Pill, and one that advocates Forks Over Knives, a vegan approach, called Forks Over Knives. To be completely honest with you, they both make amazing health claims, they both have their points, and they both have their problems, in my view. Two observations strike me as telling about them: First, they both make nearly identical health claims, which seems odd to me, since each arrives at their result by doing what the other says will kill you. How can a person not ask how they could both be right? The other point is that each one has as part of its appeal, a grand conspiracy of government and industry to keep the Truth from the people about nutrition, and that strikes me as silly, for in my experience, this world we live in, is really not all that well organized; sooner or later, someone spills the beans.

My General Impressions

The Magic Pill Trailer

The Good:

  • The video was well-produced, interesting and held my attention. If you watch it, you won’t be bored.
  • I thought the case studies were quite good, they were informative and believable; I didn’t walk away thinking anybody faked anything, and that doesn’t happen very often.
  • I also walked away with the impression that the people in the video were sincere in what they were telling us, that they really believed what they were saying.
  • The basis of the video came from actual observations of the Aboriginal people of Australia. They showed how this ancient people of hunter-gatherers were damaged by the introduction of the rich Western diet, and how that introduction into their culture resulted in the people there, who had never really experienced heart disease, diabetes, obesity and cancer went in a relatively short time from healthy to very unhealthy when they made the transition. The introduction of the Western diet decimated them, and it appears clear that that diet, our diet, was to blame, and that reverting to a diet more like the one they had eaten for thousands of years seems to have reversed the situation.

The Bad

  • They had no problem giving sources for some of our dietary thinking of the past, but their sourcing of their own statistics was not much in evidence in the video.
  • Their approach to diet is expensive, even one of the people in a case study said that to be healthy costs a lot of money, and that would certainly be the case if the main thing you are eating is meat, particularly when that meat must be range fed. I live in Iowa, good luck finding that here, this is corn country, and we have corn fed everything, not range fed.

The Ugly

  • The Magic Pill completely misrepresented the high carb, low fat diet because they entirely neglected to mention that the carbs are whole, not processed. At one point, they dramatized the dangers of the other approach by saying that it includes Lucky Charms and Coca-Cola, which it most certainly does not, and you can reference Jane Body’s best seller for the proof of this, and I’m sure the people who produced the video either know this, or with reasonable diligence, they should know it.
  • Personally, I thought they relied way too heavily on the conspiracy angle as they kept coming back to it throughout the video.

OK, this has been a good start, next time I’ll give my view of the good, bad and ugly of the Forks Over Knives video, see you then.

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I Write to You Because…

Posted on July 31, 2018 by Don Merritt

Today, we have an amazing text, one that I have never really appreciated until a few years ago.  It just hit me: Wow!

I must have been a victim of my training, because this is a transitional passage between John’s introductory section and the rest of the letter.  In verses 1:1-2:11, John has been going through this comparison and contrast that shows his readers who is and who is not in Christ.  Great section, lots of insight! Now, he is giving the reasons he has written the letter, and after this he gets into some very deep thoughts.  We often just blow by this little transition and wade into the content that begins in verse 15 but hold on a minute− the transition is amazing:

I am writing to you, dear children,
    because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.
I am writing to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I am writing to you, young men,
    because you have overcome the evil one.

I write to you, dear children,
    because you know the Father.
I write to you, fathers,
    because you know him who is from the beginning.
I write to you, young men,
    because you are strong,
    and the word of God lives in you,
    and you have overcome the evil one.

1 John 2:12-14

Do you see what this is?  It isn’t so much the “who” John is addressing, it’s the “why” that is important, contrary to so much that has been written and discussed over the years.  Let’s restructure these verses:

If you are in Christ, John is writing to you BECAUSE:

1. YOUR sins have been forgiven on account of His name.

2. YOU know Him who is from the beginning.

3. YOU HAVE OVERCOME THE EVIL ONE.

4. YOU know the Father.

5. YOU know Him who is from the beginning.

6. YOU are strong.

7. The Word of God lives in YOU.

8. YOU HAVE OVERCOME THE EVIL ONE.

Did you notice the tense used here?  Each of these “because” statements is either in present or past tense, indicating that they are facts at this very moment, not something to come in the future. I’m sure that I need not mention that there are no “buts” in any of these statements. Now, as for the “who,” there are three “who’s” in the passage, “dear children,” “fathers” and “young men.”

“Dear children” as we have already seen is one of the ways that John addressed the community of believers; it is an inclusive term.  “Fathers” can either be literally a father of children, or it can refer to the head of the household, and in Scripture this is often the case; certainly, it is when referring to a patriarch.  In those cases, something that is true of the father is true of the household.  It seems to me that here, because of the inclusive reference at the beginning, the inclusive meaning is also true of fathers, particularly since there is nothing in the text that would indicate specificity of intent.  “young men” are the heads of households yet to be born, and I think we can take this reference to mean that not only are these things true in believing households of today, but they will also be true of future generations of believing households.  You might wonder about a household of one, but remember that in John’s day, households of one were extremely unusual if not non-existent; they are actually quite a modern development. Looking at the list of statements again, it seems that we can take them to refer to all of us who are in Christ. That is also the context of the previous and following sections…

Notice that there is some repetition.  Numbers 2 and 5 are the same, but 2 comes after a reference to the Son, while 5 comes after a reference to the Father.  If you know Jesus, then you also know the Father.  Having overcome the evil one is mentioned twice also, numbers 3 and 8. Both are directed to young men, and it seems to me interesting that it is repeated the second time in a series of three statements made to young men.  Now if we have an accurate understanding of “young men,” then let’s consider these future heads of household.  They are the future, but they are also young.  They are the ones who need encouragement and the mentoring of the Elder Apostle the most, and so they, who will bear the spiritual battle in the future, need a little more instruction than those who are experienced, the veterans we might say.  Here, John gives an extra assurance that they are strong, filled with the Word, and have overcome.  I would guess that this is as much comfort to John’s “young men” in their day, as this whole list should be to us in our day. This is particularly true when we get into the rest of this letter: John is getting his readers prepared for what is coming.

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TLP Living: July 30, 2018

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Don Merritt

Your Body is a Gift from God

It’s true that our bodies are gifts from God, they are truly amazing in spite of the fact that we tend to focus on our flaws. It was crafted by the hand of God Himself, who placed His image within it. Most of us are ashamed of its appearance and society tells us to hide it from view; it’s bad. Yet we have a huge healthcare industry to care for it and “Health Care” is a huge political issue in our country. I’m probably weird in this, but that has always struck me as an odd contradiction.

Most of us don’t really understand our bodies and how they work, and as a result, we tend to abuse them, even in the most basic of ways, the way we fuel them.

I’ve long thought that one of these days I really should find a sustainable and sensible way of eating so that I can provide appropriate and responsible nutrition, and to do so in a financially responsible way. It just seems like good stewardship, and one of these days real soon, I’m going to get into it.

A quarter century, maybe more, has passed and one of these days still hasn’t appeared on the scene.

There’s no rush for me, I feel fine almost all of the time, I haven’t had a cold since… the Clinton Administration, and I’ve had the flu one time in 10 years, and a bronchitis episode once after sweeping up a dusty basement without ventilation: Not bad for an old guy. I still have a cast iron stomach and I can eat like a teenager, although I’m not as active as I was then so I have to watch how much I eat.

I have no prescriptions, I don’t take anything over the counter, but I do need to lose a few pounds. There isn’t anything new about that, I’ve been on this cycle for years: My pants get a little too tight and I lose 20 or 30 pounds and restart the process. Several years later, I do it again. Last time, I used the junk food diet (of my own creation). I ate anything I wanted: chips, hot dogs, burgers, processed junk of all kinds, but nothing after dinner. I lost enough weight doing that to drop a couple of sizes, and I’m still in those sizes, but I threw away all of the larger sizes, so it’s time to reduce again.

See, I’m doing great!

So why does this little voice in the back of my head keep saying, “Don, you know this is going to catch up with you, right?”

My answer is always the same: “Yes, but I’m not going to let that happen because one of these days I’m going to get this all sorted out and figure out how to eat properly and responsibly.”

That annoying little voice always wants the last word… “Don, didn’t you publish a post 3 years ago that said ‘tomorrow’ never comes because it’s always ‘Today’? Didn’t you also write that ‘one of these days’ is just like ‘tomorrow’, a philosophical illusion that never comes?”

“Shut up!”

“Didn’t you just say that your body is a gift from God and that you should take care of it as a simple matter of good stewardship?”

“I’m not listening to you anymore!”

Am I the only one who has to deal with such an irritating and contentious little voice in their head?

There is however, a catalyst this time around: My wife needs to follow a certain dietary course because of her health concerns, and since I’m the main cook around here, it might just be easier to consider doing the same thing she’s supposed to be doing. Yeah, sadly that would be more practical, but what she’s supposed to be doing, and which she sometimes actually does, is rather extreme; it’s called “Forks Over Knives” and was recommended by her Endocrinologist. On the other hand, we have friends who are doing the opposite and, actually, my daughter is as well, and they are reporting great results. The one they’re doing is the Keto Diet which to me, sounds like certain death.

They are complete opposites that appear to make the same claims about the results; who can make any sense about that?

So, here’s what I’ve decided to do: I will look into both of them and tell you what I learn.

Or I could just lose my pounds by my tried and true method: Eat less and move around more: 30 pounds, 30 days− easy money. I’ve done that at least a half-dozen times…

But then in a few years I’ll be right back where I am now, so I’ll look into the subject just to shut that little voice up.

All right then, that’s what I’ll be writing about this week in my second post: Stewardship and the Human Body. I’d be very pleased to hear any insights or experiences that you have had with this subject, or with either of the approaches I’ve mentioned already; see you next time when we’ll take a look at the documentaries for Forks Over Knives and Keto.

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TLP Inspiration: July 3.0, 2018

Posted on July 30, 2018 by Don Merritt

The Next Move

Here we are at the chess board, looking intently at the pieces on the table and trying to plot our next move… but this is no game−  it’s life.

Each of us has life moves to make; each of us needs a strategy and a plan…

Some people go see their financial advisor to make their plan.  Others speak with their public relations team or their marketing guru.

Paul had a different idea:

 I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.

All of us who are mature should take such a view of things. And if on some point you think differently, that too God will make clear to you. Only let us live up to what we have already attained.

Philippians 3:14-16

In context (3:1 ff.) he was talking about the ultimate attainment of eternal life in Christ, saying that he hadn’t yet attained it since he’s still living in the physical body.  Then he slipped in that last little line: “Only let us live up to what we have already attained.”

What have we already attained?

We have attained relationship with God through Jesus Christ.  We have attained an inheritance of eternal life and we are His servants on this earth.  As such, it seems that Paul is saying that we need to live accordingly, not trusting in the physical aspect of life but in recognition of the spiritual significance of our relationship with Christ.  Thus, things like financial or business advice might have their place, but it isn’t in planning “life.”  Life is not about our image that we attempt to project to others, it is about the reality of the way we live and behave.

What’s our next move?

To follow Jesus Christ!

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