peace to live by

Rejoicing in Our Sufferings? Part 3 (TMF:2585)

Friday, April 04, 2025
Peace to Live By: Rejoicing in Our Sufferings? Part 3 (TMF:2585) - Daniel Litton
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       Indeed, while many are not that familiar with everyday suffering, many around us, at the same time, actually are. One may wonder where this is going, and whether, on account of this verse or other verses, it means that the Christian is supposed to “rejoice” no matter what the sufferings. However, if we take a close look at what Paul was rejoicing over, it was actually sufferings for Christ’s sake. Not suffering for getting Alzheimer’s, not suffering for one’s baby dying, not suffering for separation from a friend, not suffering for the spouse leaving you and the kids behind, not suffering for disturbing thoughts that are hard to bring under control, not suffering for working that low paying job. These are bad things that really happen and of which are just that, bad. Paul emphasis today is something else. To put it another way, he would say to the Corinthians, “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17, ESV).

Rejoicing in Our Sufferings? Part 2 (TMF:2584)

Thursday, April 03, 2025
Peace to Live By: Rejoicing in Our Sufferings? Part 2 (TMF:2584) - Daniel Litton
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       We taught and geared to avoid suffering at all costs. Just a breeze through the local bookstore will demonstrate that fact, or a scrolling through your favorite online bookstore on your smartphone. All kinds of books, whether secular or otherwise, have been written to help us in and steer us from suffering. Suffering is bad. No one wants to suffer. And yet, Paul tell us today that he rejoiced in his sufferings. He doesn’t say he wanted to suffer, or even sought it, but he says his reaction to it was that of rejoicing. Seems somewhat perverted based, again, our our preconditioned mindsets. So, what do we do with this? How do we understand it? Well, not all of us have perfect lives. There are those who suffer. Probably not the same way Paul did through external persecution, but there are other kinds of suffering. There is disease, hospitalizations, broken relationships, divorce, mental issues, lack of money, etc.

Rejoicing in Our Sufferings? Part 1 (TMF:2583)

Wednesday, April 02, 2025
Peace to Live By: Rejoicing in Our Sufferings? Part 1 (TMF:2583) - Daniel Litton
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       Colossians 1:24: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake" (ESV). We are presented with something, which, admittedly, seems foreign to us in American society. It seems definitely so. To rejoice in one’s sufferings. We are taught to avoid suffering at all costs. Our society is even geared in that direction. Depending on what position a person takes as pertains to the wealth of our society and democracy, it certainly is apparent that we are blessed greatly. The mind is under the impression that the reasoning behind this, dare it presume, is multifaceted. An obvious reason is the support and care for Israelites, God’s original chosen people, who have the Old Testament promises. To paraphrase, we know God said of old, “Bless Israel and I will bless you.” That is experientially true. But there is also the aspect of obedience, and while obedience doesn’t always bring here and now blessing (as we are seeing right here in this passage), at the same time it often does.

Not Shifting From the Hope of the Gospel, Part 3 (TMF:2582)

Tuesday, April 01, 2025
Peace to Live By: Not Shifting From the Hope of the Gospel, Part 3 (TMF:2582) - Daniel Litton
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       Why would anyone want to shift from the good news? The temptation to shift comes when the eyes are overly focused on this present world, right? It is when attention is taken off of God in the unseen realm and rather it is all focused on what is present in the seen realm. Indeed, this would happen to Paul at the end of his ministry, where those who were closest to him, most of them in fact, would abandon him for this present world. And it will grieve Paul’s heart in the future from the moment he is writing this. It’s sad to think about, and it’s another call to us, each of us individually, to not shift “from the hope of the gospel [we] heard.” The temptation is there. It could be argued we don’t even need Satan’s influence to make such a shift, if that were possible. Our sin-natures can get us to focus on the wrong things, the wrong desires within us materialized in the external world.

Not Shifting From the Hope of the Gospel, Part 2 (TMF:2581)

Monday, March 31, 2025
Peace to Live By: Not Shifting From the Hope of the Gospel, Part 2 (TMF:2581) - Daniel Litton
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       We could say that the Gospel had been proclaimed to all the known people groups. (This obviously would have excluded people like the Native People of America since they weren’t a known people at the time). All of these theories of what Paul is saying here are reasonable, and perhaps it is a combination of all of them. But the point is that the Gospel is going forward, and should go forward, since it carries the truth that individuals can be saved from their sins and come into right relationship with God. So, the Gospel is the key, it is getting back to the basics. It is keeping things on track where the false teachers had lead people astray. That’s what Paul was seeking to do—that which he was personally called by Christ to do—to spread that good news. That fact can often be forgotten—that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is good news. Why would anyone want to shift from the good news? The temptation to shift comes when the eyes are overly focused on this present world, right?

Not Shifting From the Hope of the Gospel, Part 1 (TMF:2580)

Friday, March 28, 2025
Peace to Live By: Not Shifting From the Hope of the Gospel, Part 1 (TMF:2580) - Daniel Litton
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       Anyhow, continuing in verse 23: “not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven, and of which I, Paul, became a minister” (ESV). What does Paul mean that the Gospel “has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven”? That doesn’t seem to make sense, considering that by his time, early on, that Gospel had not gone into all the varying parts of the world. Well, we could, for one, say that it is a prophecy. Maybe Paul is telling us, giving us a hint through the Spirit of God, of what is going to happen in the future—that the Gospel is going to reach all the different parts of the world. That’s possible. Or, two, he could mean that it has been already proclaimed in all the known or populated areas of the time. Three, we could say that the Gospel had been proclaimed to all the known people groups. (This obviously would have excluded people like the Native People of America since they weren’t a known people at the time). All of these theories of what Paul is saying here are reasonable, and perhaps it is a combination of all of them.

Blinded by the Goodness Around Us (TMF:2579)

Thursday, March 27, 2025
Peace to Live By: Blinded by the Goodness Around Us (TMF:2579) - Daniel Litton
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       For us, in American society, another prevalent way in which Satan operates is through the goodness that most of us experience, in that he uses the good times people experience to lead them to forget about God, and the need for personal purity. What is meant is that because most of us live in circumstances which are not hard, per se (at least compared to other times and existences in world history; or other areas of our current world), it can be easy to become complacent. Even more than that, it can become easy to just assume that it really doesn’t matter what we do. It doesn’t matter for the women struggling in her marriage to go ahead and get a divorce. It doesn’t matter for the Christian boyfriend and the girlfriend to go ahead and move in together. So mindsets such as these. After all, everyone is doing it right? So, the goodness we experience intermingled with the discreetly poor example of everyone else can lead people to shift from the gospel, the truth, from being followed in one’s life.

Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 3 (TMF:2578)

Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Peace to Live By: Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 3 (TMF:2578) - Daniel Litton
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       The presumption is that if Mary had had relations with Joseph that this somehow would have sullied her, made her less of a pure individual. Argued here, though, would be the idea, and it certainly seems so, that this was based on a lesser view of women that prevailed at the time, something that Jesus himself stealthily worked against in his earthly ministry. The point in saying all this is that a far-off view can enter our thinking, as Christians, and that we need to be careful. That’s why we filter everything through the Scriptures. Gnosticism obviously has no basis in Scripture, nor, in reality, does the Perpetual Virginity. Those in the latter group, because it is not a major core doctrine really affecting other doctrines, are still to be classified as true believers regardless of this. But careful attention needs to be paid. Even though it may not be central, it still doesn’t line up with the evidence of the Scriptures, and we don’t want anything that we are believing which does not line up.

Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 2 (TMF:2577)

Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Peace to Live By: Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 2 (TMF:2577) - Daniel Litton
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       Even after the fall, and though the world is under the curse until the future, it is still good. God created it good, and it is still our responsibility as humans to take care of it and manage it. But what we need to understand is that Satan presents other gospels, and even other forms of beliefs, by which people can live by. And many people, including Christians, are carried along by these beliefs. Perhaps more common in our times (which was also present in the early church fathers as they are called—even later to John Calvin), and really dare this even be discussed, is the thought-process among Christians of the Perpetual Virginity of Mary, the mother of God, the mother of Jesus. This is the idea, or belief, that Jesus’ earthly mother Mary remained a virgin even after she had Jesus. It is believed to be unholy and disrespectful to think, among Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic believers, that Mary was not a virgin her whole life.

Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 1 (TMF:2576)

Monday, March 24, 2025
Peace to Live By: Far-Off Views in the Church, Part 1 (TMF:2576) - Daniel Litton
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       A popular form of false beliefs that Satan used on the early church is what we have come to call Gnosticism. This is the fully developed form of what was being discussed in the opening of the message today. Basically, there were people during the time of the Apostle Paul and the Apostle John (for it seems John also confronted the beliefs head on in his epistle of 1 John), who were cultivating these ideas and making their influence. The beliefs were a mix of what Paul was saying, along with some older Jewish beliefs and even some secular (or pagan) ideas. It was a blend that led to wrong conclusions, which led to wrong behaviors. And the idea was that everything physical was evil while everything spiritual was good. Sounds bizarre to us probably in our day and age. Though, at times, it seems like some Christians are even promoting such a type of a belief system—that the world God created is so corrupted that all is evil. We have to be careful with that.