We Should Let The Bible Be Our Guide (Excerpt from "Things I've Learned From the Word")

Lots of people will get a new device, will take the thing out of its packaging, and will start trying to use it without knowing what the thing is capable of or how the thing does what it is supposed to do. We will buy a new camera and will immediately start trying to take pictures, and when we can’t figure it out, we get frustrated. We will buy a washing machine, and will immediately pile it full of dirty clothes, only to be confused by all of the buttons and switches on the front of the machine.

I actually once bought a car, and after driving it around for a couple of years, a warning light started showing on my dashboard. I looked at the light and, thinking that I knew what the light represented, I took the car to my mechanic and informed him that I needed a new alternator because the light was on. The mechanic was an honest man, and after checking the car, he told me that my alternator was fine and that I had no problems. I saw the light and insisted that something was wrong. The mechanic told me that he didn’t see a light telling me that the alternator was faulty, but I insisted and demanded that he replace it. The mechanic did what I requested and, after spending around $200 on the repair, drove away with a new alternator, only to have the light come on again after I had been driving for about an hour. At this point, I decided to go to my glove compartment and look in the owner’s manual to see what this light meant. What I found was that my car was low on anti-freeze, and the reason that the mechanic didn’t see the light was because the car was sitting still, so the fluid was not moving around and causing the sensor to react. So I went to an auto parts store, spent $15 on a gallon of anti-freeze, filled up the reservoir and the light went out and stayed out. Knowing that there was no way that I could get a refund on the alternator, I looked at the situation as a $200 lesson, telling me that I should have consulted the instruction manual before going off on my own.

The bible is the word of God, and is the instruction manual for our lives. The bible tells us what we need to do in order to live according to how God desires us to, and it also tells us what will happen to us if we do not obey. Just like the instruction manual for the device tells us how to make the device work, it also tells us what things that we should not do, and what to do if certain things go wrong, because the manufacturer knows that these things could go wrong. When we get saved, like the bible says in 2nd Corinthians 5:17 “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation”, and as a new creation, this means that we have a new instruction manual. 

To read the rest of this passage, pick up a copy of Things That I Learned from the Word @ Amazon.com (goo.gl/nj7ywA)

Follow Eric E. Jenkins on Twitter, Instagram & Facebook @ ericejenkins65

Things That I Learned From the Word

Good News! Things That I Learned From the Word, my first completed manuscript has been published and is available to the public. How do we establish a relationship with God? What does it mean to live a Christian life? What obstacles will the world place on the path of our Christian walk? These are questions that Christians, particularly new Christians, are concerned about and Things That I Learned From the Word, helps old and new believers to gain answers to these and other questions.

In this book, I attempt to illustrate the joy of living a Christ-centered life. Things That I Learned From the Word also discusses the hardships of a Christian life, as some in society work hard to discourage Christianity. This book is not just what I learned from the word of God, but what I hope to share with everyone, as the readers of the book attempt to learn more about God and God’s word for themselves.

Things That I Learned From the Word is available at Amazon (goo.gl/nj7ywA). Be sure to pick up your copy today.

Resist the Devil and He Will Flee (Excerpt from "Things I've Learned From the Word")

Peer pressure is something that we will all have to deal with, especially when we are believers and we associate with individuals who are not, or who might not believe on the same level as us. There will be times when our friends or relatives will attempt to get us to do things that we should not be doing, or go places that we should be going, but we have to have strength enough to not allow them to get us to do things that would not be pleasing to God. In essence, we should behave as if God is watching because he always is. 

There was a time in my life when, shortly after my mother had passed away, I had just become a legal adult, and I was trying to figure out life on my own. I had never gotten involved with smoking, drugs or drinking, and everyone close to me knew this. However, one day, someone close to me was smoking marijuana in my presence, and asked me if I wanted to participate. When I stated that I did not wish to, their response to me was that I should try it so that once I was alone in the world, and someone tried to pass off some artificial or harmful marijuana to me, I would be able to know the difference, as if it was a forgone conclusion that at some point, I would become a weed smoker just as they were. Fortunately for me, even though I did not have a relationship with God at that point in my life, I had the strength to refuse that person again, and through the grace of God, I can say that I have still never gotten involved with any substance habits. 

What we need to remember is that if we give in to temptation, or if we simply just say no to the occasion of the temptation, the devil will continue to follow us. If someone attempts to tempt a believer into doing something that goes against their beliefs, there is a difference between saying “no” and meaning “no”. If someone offers a non-smoker a cigarette, the non-smoker can say “no”, but the smoker could interpret that to mean “not right now” or “not today”. However, if the non-smoker replies with “no thanks, I don’t smoke” or “no, smoking can kill you”, then there is no way that the smoker can confuse the response with there being a chance that the non-smoker might smoke in the future. 

The same can be said regarding peer pressure and sex. If a young man is trying to pressure a young girl into having sex, or if a group of people is trying to coerce a person into having sex because ‘everyone else is doing it’, the person being tempted can simply say “no”, but as before, the answer could be interpreted as “not right now”, “not today”, or “not in front of all of you”. However, if the response is something along the lines of “the bible says that sex outside of marriage is a sin, and since my soul matters to God, it matters to me also”, then there is no way that this response could be confused for anything else. The point of this is that we must turn back temptation and live according to the will and the word of God.

Every Day IS a Blessed Day (With Excerpts from "Things I've Learned From the Word")

I recently had a conversation with an individual who, at the end of the conversation, told me to have a blessed day. I wished the same blessing on them and I was glad, as I had written recently, that the person was not afraid to believe in God. But as I walked away from that conversation, I started thinking about how I was already having a blessed day because I was alive and able to talk about having a blessed day.

Every time that we wake up, we have been blessed by God because there are many who go to bed only to have their lives ended while they slept. I tell people that having the ability to walk, talk, think, see, hear, touch and smell means that we are blessed. Even if we can only do some of those things and not all of them, we are blessed to be able to have the functions that we have.

I used to work in an office building and every day, I would attempt to park in approximately the same place, which meant that each day, I would pass by the car of a gentleman who truly inspired me. Each morning, the man would climb out of his van and would position himself into his wheelchair. The man had lost both legs and one of his arms, but he would use his one good arm to get himself into his chair. Aside from the fact that each day, I would marvel at the idea that he had just driven himself to work, I was amazed at his independence. He would put himself into his chair and use the mechanical device on the chair to drive the chair to the building. He would never let me open a door for him and he would never let me push an elevator button for him.

People would see him, and would tell me that the felt sorry for the man, and I would tell them not to because I knew that he had been blessed by God. When people asked how I could say that he had been blessed when he was forced to live with no legs and only one arm, I would say that he was still alive, he did not play the victim and feel sorry for himself, and he made the best use that he could of what he had, and that only a person with strong faith could endure in the face of such hardship. It was like the story of Job; no matter what the devil did to Job, Job did not turn his back on God because he knew that God had not turned his back on Job. This man confirmed for me that God blesses us every day, and that every day that we can discuss having a blessed day IS a blessed day.

Follow Eric E. Jenkins on Twitter @ericejenkins65

The Big Lie (Excerpt from "Things I've Learned From the Word")

Consider for a moment that everything that we have learned from the bible and about the bible is false. Imagine what life would be like if we did not believe in God and if we chose not to follow the Ten Commandments. Our lives might be very different if we didn’t have God. We would not have to worry about what God would do to us if we did not obey the Commandments, so for a moment, consider what life on Earth would be like.

The Sixth Commandment says that we should not commit murder. As we know, murder is against the law, and if we are found guilty of committing murder, we will spend a long time in jail, or we might possibly be sentenced to the death penalty. Aside from this, I know that I would not like to think about the prospect of someone killing or wanting to kill me, so the idea of being a victim of murder is something of which I am not in favor. Also, I have no desire to kill anyone else, and most sensible people do not wish to be murdered, so this is a law that many follow whether or not they believe in God. 

The bible also says that we should not steal or lie, referring to lying as bearing false witness against one’s neighbor. Simply put, no sensible person would want someone to steal their property or to tell lies about them. There have been many people who have gotten in trouble with the law, with their spouses, or on their jobs because someone told a lie that involved them. I have both almost lost a job, and have been punched in the nose because of lies someone else told. I have also had my possessions stolen from me, both by strangers and by people who claimed to be my friends, so I, like everyone else, can attest to the fact that living in a society where people did these things regularly would not be a society in which many would choose to or would prefer to live.

To put this plainly, even if a person chose not to believe in God, if that person was rational and reasonable, that person would not want someone stealing from them, telling lies about them, killing them or sleeping with their spouse while cursing at them constantly, so whether or not they are believers in God, most people obey a majority of the Ten Commandments, and if they are going to obey most of them, they might as well believe in God, live according to the whole word of God, and reap the blessings that God has for those of us who believe. It seems to make sense that if a person lives according to some of the word anyway, that they would want to have the abundant, prosperous life that comes from obeying the rest of the word of God.