Timothy's Thoughts

H ow do you praise God when life is tough? That was our discussion in Sunday school last Sunday. Our adult Sunday school classes are studying the book of Job and last Sunday we looked at the passage in which four servants came one after the other to tell him of the loss of his livestock, his servants, and his children, but we’re told that he worshiped God and didn’t charge God foolishly. It is here that we see that well known statement, “Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21) I think a lot of people get the wrong idea when we talk about praising God in the hard times. People look at 1 Thessalonians 5:18 and conclude that we should thank God for whatever happens to us, even the bad things. That may be easy enough to do with some things. “Thank you Lord for my car not starting this morning; I could’ve been in a wreck.” But how do you thank God for taking away y...

I s it just me or is the so called Sanctuary Cities Bill misnamed? My understanding of the bill is that it found prevent Texas State money from going to cities that prohibit officers from asking detainees about their immigration status. From the name, you would think that the bill attempts to establish Sanctuary Cities, but it actually does the opposite. To be honest, I don’t like the idea of cities trying to get around state and federal law by telling their police officers not to ask about immigration status. But I’m not so sure that I’m opposed to the concept of Sanctuary Cities. In the Bible, Sanctuary Cities were established for people who accidentally killed someone, so that they would be protected from the avenger of blood. Today, that kind of sanctuary isn’t needed because all people who kill someone are given a day in court to see whether it was murder or not. But the immigration issue is not so cut and dried. By the letter of the law, an alien who is in the country without t...

T he atheist who stopped by my blog to tell me that “God is not love” got me thinking. In writing, we talk about how we should show, don’t just tell. That’s nothing new. God knew that a long time before we did and yet, we have this statement in the Bible that says, “God is love.” I thought it might do us good to take a closer look at that. The statement appears not once but twice in First John 4. It is in verse 8 and again in verse 16. In verse 8 is says, “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.” In verse 16 it says, “And we have known and believed the love that God hath to us. God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.” In context, what we see here is that John isn’t trying to tell us that God is love. John writes this in such a way that we see that he took the statement “God is love” as a known fact. It is similar to someone saying, a green leaf is not the sky because the sky is blue. What John is saying is that we know that those with...

D o you ever do the what-if thing? I’m currently working on a book that may have a target audience of 130,000. Just imagine if all of them purchased the book. Even at $1 per book, that would be a lot of money. Considering the nature of the book, $1 is actually on the low side. And if I sold that many copies, I’d have publishers and agents beating at my door trying to sign me. I know it isn’t realistic, but what-if. But what would be more realistic? I happen to know that the 130,000 number may be over inflated because it is the number of times a particular piece of software has been downloaded, not the number of people using the software. Let’s suppose that the average user has download the software five times. If so, the number of users is 26,000. That’s not quite as impressive, but I wouldn’t mind selling that many copies. If the price is set right, I could make a nice sum from that. What-if? We know that not all of the users will buy the book. What if 5,000 bought it? Depending o...

A n atheist stopped by my blog the other day. He seemed to think it was important that I be told that “God is not love.” He had a long list of adjectives to describe what he saw God as being in the Old Testament, one of which was jealous. I couldn’t agree with all of the adjectives he used, but I could agree with that one because God describes himself as jealous. He wants our worship and doesn’t like it when we worship something else. My atheist friend appeared to think that was a bad thing. To me, that is at the very heart of sinfulness. Compared to God, man is nothing, but so many people have this idea that they are so special that it would be wrong for God to tell them what to do. God made man from the dust of the ground. You can’t get any lower than that. We are dirt. Break us down into minerals and we’re worth less than $5. If we could see all of the Universe, we’re just tiny specks on a tiny planet near a tiny star in a tiny galaxy. What arrogance for us to think that God has a...

S teve Laube recently posted an article on average book sales . The figures he posted are interesting and yet, most authors never sell that many books. Across 10 authors and 51 books, he came up with a figure of 12,455 copies. Someone else came up with a figure of 5,000 copies. Most of the one million books published in the United States each year will never sell more than 100 copies. Why the differences in numbers? One thing we have to ask when trying to find the average is what we really mean by the average. As you are probably aware, there is more than one way to calculate an average. The most frequently used method is to calculate the mean. This is done by taking the total books sold and dividing by the number of titles. This is what Steve Laube did. But the mean has little meaning when a few books have very large numbers and the rest are smaller. For example, if we have three books with sales of 5,300, 7,000, and 1,000,000, the mean will be 337,433. We wouldn’t tell an author wh...

T he Bible says that every sin is a sin against God. How can that be? We see an example of that with Joseph. When he refused to sleep with Potiphar’s wife, he asked how he could commit this great sin against God. We know that’s what it says, but we question how what goes on between two people could be a sin against God. It might be easier to understand if he had said it was a sin against Potiphar, but he didn’t; he said it was a sin against God. One way in which it is a sin against God is that it fails to recognize that God is in charge. If God says adultery is wrong and we decide it is okay, then we’re saying that we have more right to control our lives than God does. If your boss told you to do something but you decided you wanted to do something else instead, he just might be upset with you. Another way that it is a sin against God is that it breaks the fellowship with God. God is holy. In fact, that appears to be his foremost attribute. God is not able to look at sin. When we d...