Self-analysis is hard work!  It’s tiring work!  It’s endless work!  But worse than all these things, it holds an implicit danger. It can be futile work.  Self-analysis can become so self-absorbing that it keeps us from turning outward to see what we really should be doing.  It is dangerously interiorating.  When we spend the store of our time on understanding ourselves we are usually letting a lot of other things go.  It’s a kind of paralysis diabolicus!  Satan likes us best when we are completely absorbed in trying to figure ourselves out, because at such moments all forward motion in our lives stop.

Those people who accomplish a great deal for God are people who never forget the atoning work of the blood of Jesus Christ. They are people who care less about idiosyncratic self, and more about the work, will and purpose of Jesus functioning in their new lives, which are in Christ.

It’s sexy among young people — my generation — to talk about ditching institutional religion and starting a revolution of real Christ-followers living in real community without the confines of church. Besides being unbiblical, such notions of churchless Christianity are unrealistic. It’s immaturity actually, like the newly engaged couple who think romance preserves the marriage, when the couple celebrating their golden anniversary know it’s the institution of marriage that preserves the romance. Without the God-given habit of corporate worship and the God-given mandate of corporate accountability, we will not prove faithful over the long haul.

What we need are fewer revolutionaries and a few more plodding visionaries. That’s my dream for the church — a multitude of faithful, risktaking plodders. The best churches are full of gospel-saturated people holding tenaciously to a vision of godly obedience and God’s glory, and pursuing that godliness and glory with relentless, often unnoticed, plodding consistency.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced yesterday (Friday) that Israel and the Palestinians will begin direct peace talks. An invitation was extended to both parties for a summit in Washington on Sept 2. A one year deadline has been set for the talks. These talks will also include The Quartet, a group composed of the United Nations, the United States, the European Union, and Russia. 

Today, while Israel is being coerced to begin discussions regarding Middle East peace, Russia’s nuclear engineers were busy aiding the Iranians in the initial startup of Iran’s first nuclear reactor.

On the same day, news reports out of Israel are telling of the discovery of a 1.5 billion barrel oil field. Israeli oil exploration company Givot Olam announced to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE) that production test drilling had revealed this lucrative field.

Throughout Scripture, we find line upon line of truth burrowed deeply within the context of eternity’s Word to us. It’s our Salvation.  It’s our Hope.  It’s our Guide.  It’s our Light.  It’s our Rhema. It’s our Healing.  It’s our Prophecy.  It’s our Strong Tower.  It’s our Refuge.  It’s our Sword of the Spirit.

In all of its instruction, in the layers of revelation that it offers daily; it seems that there is a progressive move away from the absolutes of its instruction and the canons of its New Testament Christian principles and practices.

Too often in our society, we focus on a loving God whose tender mercies are continually pursuing us; even while participating in sins, we hope that His love covers us. The Bible is certain in its sound against willful, stubborn sin. “But if ye will not do so, behold, you have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out” Num. 32:23.  The Prophet Ezekiel said, “…so that in all your doings your sins do appear” Ezek. 21:24.   Isaiah also wrote, “…your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear” Isa. 59:2.  And Jeremiah penned, “Your iniquities have turned away these things, and your sins have withheld good things from you” Jer. 5:25

While studying 2 Samuel 11 this morning, I have reflected on the truism, “Love Hurts!”  May I go further and say, “Unity kills.”  It’s the destroyer of attitudes and actions such as: self-will, personal pride, ego-driven ambition, self-centeredness, self-involvment, selfishness, self-seeking and self-serving. They all die at the altar of “surrender.”

For unity to reign, one’s personal agenda bows down at the altar of corporate blessing and corporate good and lays its life out, yielded to service and submitted to the yoke of Christ Jesus.

David’s Bathsheba affair is a portrait of a man who granted himself liberties he did not have.  He was out of order.  And, the teachings of his life show us that most often, when indulgent souls grant themselves liberties, those liberties become the foundation of a future license.