Incomplete Loves

By James Robison

Beth Moore, a wonderful friend and teacher on our television program, LIFE Today, has a Border collie named Star. She describes the cherished pet as her “best buddy” and relates a story to illustrate an insightful biblical truth.
Since Beth’s ministry has its own office building, Beth frequently takes Star to work with her. This breed is prone to substantial obsessive-compulsive issues, so they tend to fixate on their owner. In a very real way, Beth “completes” Star. The collie stares at her all the time. She sleeps where she sees Beth as soon as she opens her eyes. She puts her head down and tries to herd Beth so that she will go where Star desires. When she accompanies her owner to work, Star stares at Beth all day while she’s working.
Beth’s coworkers love Star and consider her the staff mascot. But once, when Beth had to leave the office for a few hours, her staff had some difficulty in babysitting the dog. After Beth left, they brought Star to the floor where the whole administrative team works. Star went from office to office, greeting everyone (or perhaps looking for Beth), then began to whine. Nobody could calm or quiet the dog. As Star became more distraught, they became more desperate. Finally, they tried playing a DVD of Beth teaching. It worked! When Beth returned, Star was still fixated on the television screen, watching her master’s every move.
That humorous illustration provides insight into human relationships. One of our biggest frustrations in life comes from the incomplete love we experience when we pin our hopes for fulfillment on people, experiences, or things. An incomplete love almost fulfills us, but still leaves us yearning for more. These incomplete loves are wonderful gifts from God, but nothing on this planet can truly complete us.
Receiving support from others during difficult times is very healthy. We need it for comfort, affirmation and, occasionally, healing. This “fellowship of suffering” is a beautiful thing because it connects us with others who have experienced the same sort of pain. You get to know someone well enough that you feel like you can honestly say, “Yes, I totally get that because I’ve been through every single bit of it!”
However, if you stay close enough to that person, sooner or later you will come to a place of disappointment and departure. You may feel alone at this point because you thought you had found someone who completely understood you. Then you begin to realize that he or she can’t go there with you 100% because you’re processing everything through your own personal history. Only you grew up in your family and felt what you felt and experienced what you experienced.
The Bible says, “Cursed are those who put their trust in mere humans, who rely on human strength and turn their hearts away from the Lord.... But blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence" (Jeremiah 17:5, 7).
Many animals are herd animals. Gazelles on the African plain stick together. Canadian Geese migrate back and forth together from season to season. Sheep, cattle, and horses find a level of safety, direction, and comfort by sticking together. Yet all of them are still susceptible to predators. If we, as humans, stick together and rely solely on one another, we will eventually fall prey to our enemy, Satan, who always lurks nearby “as a roaring lion” (1 Peter 5:8, KJV). A time will ultimately come when we have to get to the place where it’s only you and I and Jesus.
Proverbs 14:10 tells us, “Each heart knows its own bitterness, and no one else can fully share its joy.” Nobody else can enter into the intimacy of everything the way Jesus can. A huge part of our emotional well-being comes from reaching this place. We can let a lot of people off the hook for not being Jesus to us--for not being able to read our minds or emotions. God is the only one who truly completely “gets us” because He knows the intimate ways of our minds and hearts; He knows and has seen things that we don’t even remember. “For the Lord will go ahead of you; yes, the God of Israel will protect you from behind” (Isaiah 52:12b).
This is not to say that we detach from others. God puts people in our life so that we can journey together, shoulder to shoulder and elbow to elbow, and share experiences. Koinonia is a Greek word in the Bible that means “fellowship, sharing in common, communion.” Christian fellowship is an important and necessary part of the Christian life, but it’s not simply the casual gathering of people in a church building. True fellowship is predicated upon a common belief in Jesus Christ, then enacted in an active pursuit of a common spiritual goal and bond. It is the shared experience of life as a true follower of Jesus Christ. Philippians 2:1-2 says;

If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

Koinonia unites believers under the lordship of Jesus Christ and provides the environment to grow spiritually and fulfill God’s purpose in our life. Fellowship is a gift from God, but it is not a substitute for a one-on-one relationship with Him.
Any love outside of God is an incomplete love. Beth’s collie may find purpose through her owner, but such fulfillment is not sufficient for humans. Only God can truly satisfy.

The Decline of a Great Nation

By James Robison

 

 

President Obama or Gov. Romney, Democrats or Republicans, have never been and never will be our hope. The Lord is our hope and will offer help if we will turn to Him in humility and brokenness allowing Him to heal first our hearts and then our land. God’s own family – the church – needs to set the example in unity and wise reasoning, while visibly demonstrating how to work together so the world groping in darkness can see the power of love and truth in action. As my friend Rev. Samuel Rodriguez said, “Unless the agenda of the Lamb replaces the agenda of the donkey or the elephant, there will be no correction of our dangerous course.”
As I have repeatedly said for years now, the issue is not so much an election as it is a direction. Necessary correction for the United States of America continues and would regardless of who won Tuesday’s election. We must learn important lessons. The ever increasing pressure on a nation that has forsaken God in too many ways will intensify until in humility we fall on our knees before God or in humiliation are brought to our knees through crushing consequences, the result of forsaking God and sound biblical principles.
When expressing appreciation for the outcome of the election, President Obama rightly said that we must pull together as a family, caring for one another, and make necessary course corrections such as bringing excessive spending and debt under control. He emphasized the importance of learning how to effectively deal with our challenges and work across party lines. (This would in itself be a supernatural work.) Without a miracle of transformed thinking – the result of minds renewed by God’s love and truth – our direction will not change in a meaningful way. It requires changed people to change nations and rewrite history as only God can, through yielded believers and determined citizens.
President Obama also referenced the importance of reforming our tax code. In order to do this, people must experience renewed thinking because most Americans must be taught about the necessity and meaning of the fair tax. The President is right, however, concerning this need for reform. The economy will never be stabilized until we correct it and release the private sector to provide jobs and opportunity. Successful people must also begin expressing compassionate interest in the well-being of those who struggle, while everyone is taught the importance of assuming personal responsibility. Fatherlessness has led this present generation to erroneously seek to find a father in the federal government. There is only one Father who can give us the wisdom, guidance, and will to accomplish what is required.
I am still wondering if only a severe shaking and ultimate humiliation will be necessary before both the church and nation turn to God in genuine repentance. With God’s help and His grace, we must all be faithful witnesses and as ministers proclaim His word fearlessly and faithfully. We must continually offer hope and help to the downtrodden, overlooked, and often forgotten people here and around the world. We are commissioned by Christ to be salt and light, Spirit-filled witnesses, and makers of disciples among the nations.
Too many Americans have been trained to want someone other than God to care for them and consistently fail to truly love their neighbors as themselves. People are on the brink of trusting what the Old Testament prophets referred to as “the shadow of Egypt” (the ways of the world) and in another type of Pharaoh rather than in the shelter of the Almighty and as a result we are headed for bondage from which only God can deliver us. The Lord remains our hope.
What do we do now? We must continue to hold up the light of Christ, pray fervently, witness continually, and keep standing for the kingdom of God right here, right now.
Permit me to share a letter written with concern from Christian friends in Germany. Please consider it, pray earnestly, and perhaps pass my comments and the content of the following to others who care.

Our Dear America:

Today, Obama has been re‐elected; all the efforts of many Christian leaders, prayer movements, “prophets” and “concerned Americans” who have lobbied, written appeals, articles, books, letters ‐ some have even done films ‐ to warn not to vote for him have come to nothing. Many of them have behaved as if the future of the Kingdom of God is at stake. Well, it is not.

Can we, as foreigners who dearly love you as a people, say a few words into this situation? Because it is evident to us that God has a clear plan with your nation. But many don´t seem to see it, and therefore run the danger of fighting the wrong fight, wasting precious time and resources, and even endlessly call upon God to do what He just will not do.

The German weekly Der Spiegel, kind of a German Time Magazine, has a cover picture of Uncle Sam in bed, titled, “The American Patient: The Decline of a Great Nation.” We think this is a prophetic picture. As your friends, we know, acknowledge and admire that America has had a great past. But how will your future look like?

God chastises whom he loves because he knows: pride will come before the fall, and humbleness and brokenness is the only condition he responds to. We personally sense we need to tell you: the destiny of your nation is in God’s hands, not yours. It is not at all about Obama or Romney, it is about God using all the nations in the world according to his global and unchanging plans. Did you ever allow the thought that God in his sovereignty is using Obama like a pawn on his chessboard to humble the U.S. as a nation because he wants to show his grace to a nation gone completely self-sufficient?

A nation that is so full of independence, individualism, nationalism and trusting a greed and fear‐based economy that there may be only one way open to heal it from its idolatry and re‐align itself with the Kingdom of God: a crisis beyond anything that America has ever seen?

In 2008, God has been challenged by a man standing up in public, preaching to the cheers of a huge crowd: “Yes we can!” We watched it; we saw the tears of excitement in the eyes of the people; the statements were received as if coming from the Messiah himself, and the electoral rallies had all the flavor of a religious revival. "Yes, we can" is the exact opposite of the King of kings saying: "Without me, you can do nothing!"

If God is the one who "deposes kings and raises up others" (Dan 2:21), does it really matter what are the names of the current puppets set in place by God that advance both the New World Order and the Kingdom of God? Neither Herod, Pilate, nor Caesar were truly important for the development of the Kingdom. That is exactly why Kingdom people do not play in the Second League, but the First, the one that matters. The one that puts the Kingdom first, and everything else – including their own nation – second.

The problem of the current commotion and insecurities arises when even the people that call themselves after God keep confusing the Kingdom of God with the United States of America. And when that happens, especially through Christians with a public voice, then we have truly lost all perspective of the coming Kingdom of Jesus Christ and the predictions he has made that will precede his coming.

America is being publicly humbled by God; and he is going to use Obama – and those after him ‐ to further advance his agenda that will lead all nations to kneel before that one true King Jesus very soon. If any nation wants to become a tower that reaches up to high heaven, it will be humbled by a God who will not share his glory with people relying on their own strength.

America, where do you go from here? What does this mean for you? The future is going to be very, very rough. Your securities will vanish, the economy will go down, the education system will become even worse, the streets more dangerous, the churches even more divided, the youth even more disillusioned – unless there is a true movement that abandons all those idols mentioned above, and radically repents, makes a radical alignment with the King of the Kingdom of God and his constitution, live the Law of Christ in all areas of life, first and foremost in the areas of sex, money, power and how we “do church”. This is a defining moment for you as a nation. You could go down, as the German journalist of Der Spiegel predicted. Or, America could be literally re‐invented by Kingdom people who are ready to implode the prevailing myths about America’s greatness, and replace it by God’s greatness. The King has even greater things purposed and would fulfill those purpose if those who call themselves after Jesus the King, would turn away from their self‐made religion, self‐made churches and religious factions, self‐made visions of success, and their self‐made, harmless God.

Can we lovingly but urgently call you back at this hour to begin and initiate a movement to reposition and repatriate yourselves into the eternal Kingdom, by submitting yourself not only in theory but also in practical deeds to Jesus the King, starting to obey the King and his liberating decrees in all the areas that count? You might even want to write a declaration of dependence on God and each other, because by idolizing anything else before and over God, you will become illegal aliens in the country that counts, where we all are called to have our home: the Kingdom, the one place where our true citizenship, nationality and allegiance lies (Phil 3:20). This is the only one country that will not be shaken, as it has an unchanging King.

If there is any way that we can help you in this great challenge and task – we want you to know we will.

Wolfgang and Mercy Simson

homeless

Philadelphia

This is a cumulation of the past few trips to Philadelphia as God's hands and feet.  We give God all the glory and are grateful to serve Him.
If your church or group is interested in starting a Survivor Bag Ministry in your town, go to
Love In A Bag for more information.  God bless you.