Seven Points J. Percy Priest Dam Campground, Hermitage, Tennessee (Nashville)
It’s been so uneventful, for three days, I’m combining them all. This is for Saturday, April 14th through Monday, April 16th.
It’s been cold. It rained for 22 hours straight. I napped on Sunday afternoon. Blaine tried to watch a race, but weather eventually postponed the second half. But we did manage to get out a couple of times to walk around the campground in between rain drops.
I have a post for Sunday and that’s all the pictures I have, so that’s most of what will be here.
It was still raining Sunday morning. And cold. And I hadn’t slept since shortly after midnight. I hate nights of insomnia when I’m sleepy and I’m tired, but I just can’t sleep. So I read. I pray. I toss and turn. I try to empty my mind of any and all thought. Sometimes, as with Saturday night, nothing works.
There’ll be no church service for me.
Instead, we visited The Chapel in Green via the internet and listened to Pastor Mike’s third lesson on Revelation that he taught on January 28th. He’s so passionate about teaching us Revelation and how it is relevant to us today. He works hard at teaching us in a way we can understand, and he’s very good at it. I’m reminded each time that his words surely come from the Holy Spirit, because that is the only way a rocket scientist could reach us ‘common people’. (better than simple-minded, eh?)
I find it necessary to inform/remind you that when I revisit the Sunday teachings, they are my own take on what was taught, and often I add additional thoughts. Please don’t take what I say verbatim as something one of these wonderful teachers has said from the pulpit.
Pastor Mike reminded us that the book of Revelation was given to us through a hierarchy – God to Jesus to an Angel to John to the Church (and by Church, that is everyone who calls themselves Christian, whether it be past, present or future). It is Jesus’ revelation (or revealing), not John’s. In other words, God the Father revealed it to Jesus the Son and He in turn passed it on to an angel to share with John. The word “church” means ‘ones called out’ by someone. Jesus has called us. Each person who believes in Him is “the church”.
Today’s lesson was focused on Revelation 1:12-2:7. It is the beginning of the address to ‘the seven churches’, and He begins with the church in Ephesus.
It is always helpful to know history, but I didn’t always think so. I didn’t much care for history until, well, I guess until I discovered that knowing the Old Testament, helped me understand the New. Now, as any of you who read my blog regularly know, I enjoy history! It gives things context. It’s fascinating, especially when you know the context – just like knowing Andrew Jackson participated in duels, made much more sense after having learned the context of duels at that time in history.
Reading and learning from Scripture is very much the same way.
So it’s important to know something about the city of Ephesus at the time of John’s writing, to better understand Jesus’ praise and condemnations.
The city of Ephesus was the caretaker of the goddess Artemis (or as the Romans called her, Dianna). She was considered the goddess of the hunt (among other things) and one of the most respected of all the Greek deities. She was the daughter of Zeus and sister of Apollo. Her temple in Ephesus was four times the size of the Parthenon. Having just visited the replica, it’s hard to fathom a building four times that size!
As for the Christian church in Ephesus, these people had been privileged to sit under the absolute best teachers imaginable. Besides being indwelt by the Holy Spirit, the apostle Paul spent three years teaching them. He was followed by Timothy and then the apostle John.
Jesus had a lot of nice things to say about them. They worked hard, they practiced their Christianity, they persevered under trials and persecution in the name of Christ Jesus, they didn’t tolerate wickedness in men, and tested those who claimed to be apostles (Jesus’ messengers) but were not. In other words, they were only interested in doing and believing the Word of God. They had no interest in melding world views with God’s views. They also hated the practices of the Nicolaitans. These were a sect within the church that worked out compromise with pagan society – namely idolatry and sexual immorality. In other words, something similar to what the Old Testament Jews often tried to practice – worshiping the One True God and also any other gods in the area. Sort of a “just in case” and also “to keep the peace”. Which isn’t that dissimilar to today’s beliefs that “all ways lead to Heaven” or “the Bible is a nice outline, but I’ll pick and choose what I want to believe and/or practice”.
Jesus’ admonition of the church in Ephesus was that they had forsaken their first love. So what does that mean? It means that even though they’d been taught the importance of love. That God IS love. That we are to love others – regardless of who or what they are. They had given up on demonstrating love to each other and to those outside the church family. They had purposely (even if not necessarily intentionally) set love aside because they were so focused on their orthodoxy (rules). My take on this? They were acting just like the Pharisees. Of course, God wants us to obey Him. Of course, there’s consequences when we don’t. But that doesn’t mean we stop loving people simply because they don’t obey. Simply because they’ve sinned. Simply because they’re sinners, just as each one of us is.
We are to show love. No matter what. In any way we can. And even when rebuffed, we still love. We don’t have to accept others’ actions or words or whatever, but we are still to love. Not hate. Not write them off. Love. Above all else, love. And not just any kind of love (as we use the word so freely now). This is agape love, or unconditional love.
Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. ~ I John 4:8
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you love one another. ~ John 13:34-35
Easier said than done, but crucial to practice and learn. It’s been given to all believers as fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness and self-control. ~ Galatians 5:22. So if we are true followers of Jesus Christ, if we have believed on faith, then we have the ability. We just need to get out of the Spirit’s way.
And now, these three remain; faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love. ~ I Corinthians 13:13
Monday morning, I looked out the window at 8:22am and discovered it was SNOWING! Told you it was cold!
The NASCAR race was able to finish up on Monday, and we did bundle up and did another 2 laps around. It was colder than Sunday!
I’m no longer keeping track of our hiking miles. For some reason, occasionally when I put it together, in exactly the same spot, my computer freezes up and shuts down my document page and I freak out because it appears to be lost forever. I don’t need that. So I’m done. Hopefully, it won’t start doing it somewhere else!
We also benefited from God’s Grace as we learned that an F1 tornado missed our oldest son’s home by about a mile! But it did hit the local grocery store parking lot and overturned two cars. Thankfully, no one was injured!
We ended our day Monday with the discovery that the power was out in the campground. It took our batteries running low and shutting off our power to realize it. That means the power’d been out for quite a while in the campground. We didn’t know because it’s always dark here once the sun goes down. There are no streetlights or outside lights of any kind and the sites are wide spread, so you don’t get other camper’s ambient lighting either, and apparently, our power switches to battery without a sound. So Blaine turned on the generator for about 30 minutes until the campground power was restored. We were a little concerned, because you can’t run the generator all night and it takes about 5 hours to fully charge the batteries.
And it was cold outside. Freezing actually.