Let’s just start by saying, read the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:1-7:27). Most of this applies to what it means to be a liberal.

Conservatives may call us libtards, a word I find incredibly offensive. What we do most often is follow the advice of Jesus Christ. We help our fellow man when he is down, we turn the other cheek, and we love all of God’s creation. Conservatives, no matter how Christian they claim to be, cannot say the same. We believe in the Beatitudes:

3 “God blesses those who are poor and realize their need for Him, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.

4 God blesses those who mourn, for they will be comforted.

5 God blesses those who are humble, for they will inherit the whole earth.

6 God blesses those who hunger and thirst for justice, for they will be satisfied.

7 God blesses those who are merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

8 God blesses those whose hearts are pure, for they will see God.

9 God blesses those who work for peace, for they will be called the children of God.

10 God blesses those who are persecuted for doing right, for the Kingdom of Heaven is theirs.”

Matthew 5:3-10

Liberals come not to destroy the beliefs of our forefathers, but to fulfill their true meaning. We do not break our vows, but work to fulfill them. When we make a promise, we do our best to keep it unlike many conservatives who harp on family values, yet harass women, cheat on their wives, or flat out lie to your face. When we give to charities, we don’t flaunt it in public; we quietly give. We do not loudly profess our faith and denounce others for their differences, but see value in all of God’s people and all faiths. God said, “For He gives His sunlight to both the evil and the good, and He sends rain on the just and the unjust alike.” (Matthew 5:45) We often pray in private instead of loudly professing our prayers and making others follow along with our beliefs. We don’t hoard our treasures just to be called the rich, but give to charities and help others who are in need. God says if you store up your money, the moths will eat it, but if it is stored in heaven then the moths cannot eat it. The Lord God will provide for us, and we must help Him provide for the less fortunate.

We don’t judge others or profess empty lies. We know we are not perfect; we must first understand that before we can understand others. God has told us, “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.” (Matthew 6:12) As liberals, we may not always do what is most popular, but wide is the gate that leads to hell and narrow is the gate that leads to heaven. We are always on the lookout for the false prophets who proclaim to follow the Words of Christ. But in the end, conservatives are like wolves to sheep. People who proclaim falsely will eventually eat away at us. The weak-minded will follow the wolf because he tells them what they want to hear. Yet the wolf always betrays his prey.

Liberals build their politics on a solid foundation of the Constitution and the teachings of the Founding Fathers. Conservatives are like those who build their houses on the sand. Eventually, it washes away as their lies catch up with them. We must continue to build onto the firm foundation of Christ. While not all liberals are believers in Christ, we all have these traits in common. We take the Golden Rule seriously and do unto others as we would have them do unto us. It is the foundation of all moral religions and philosophies. We must not allow conservatives who only wish to line their own pockets and loudly proclaim their righteousness to win out. We know from God that the moths will eat their money and not to be like those who proclaim loudly at the temple for He frowns upon them.

One last piece of advice from a liberal: “Don’t waste what is holy on people who are unholy. Don’t throw your pearls to pigs! They will trample the pearls, then turn and attack you.” (Matthew 7:6) If you throw your weight to conservatives, they will merely turn and attack you. Their loyalty is misguided and they waste what is given to them.

P.S. Usually, I don’t discuss politics and religion, but I am tired of Republicans proclaiming the religious high ground when it is the liberals who hold the high ground.

Whoever is wicked covets the spoil of evildoers, but the root of the righteous bears fruit. (ESV) (Proverbs 12:12)

Thieves are jealous of each other’s loot, but the godly are well rooted and bear their own fruit. (NLT) ( Proverbs 12:12 )

Do you ever find yourself envious of other people? It is only natural, everyone does, it’s part of being human. Watching the Olympics, I envy a lot of these athletes: their stamina, their strength, their beauty, etc. However, we don’t have to act on our feelings. While we can’t steal these things from the athletes, we can and often find other flaws in people to make ourselves feel better. This verse tells us that with being strong in our faith comes the ability to create our own fruit! Of course, this is done through God. If we are to be envious, envy someone for their faith and emulate that. We can work hard to have better bodies and work on our own strengths. But how awesome to know we can rise above thieves, who only steal from each other, and instead can glorify God with creating fruit.

Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see. (NLT) ( Hebrews 11:1 )

Faith can be simplified to mean trust. It’s trusting in God even though you can’t see, smell, or touch Him. Yet, he is still all around us. It’s trusting that He loves you and will always have your best interest at heart. Once you believe that He loves you, it becomes easier to place more faith in Him. How are you faithfully trusting in God?

History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. (NLT) Ecclesiastes 1:9

What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun. (ESV) Ecclesiastes 1:9

When we gain meaning from anything apart from God we are never completely satisfied. It is only when we seek God that we are truly content in ourselves, our circumstances, and our relationships. While there may be nothing new under the sun, you certainly can count on a relationship with God that is refreshing and satisfying.  What are you thankful for that God has been showing you lately?

Download this app to get your daily devotions: http://jctrois.com

http://www.jctrois.com/dailybibledevotion/devotion.html?devo=QS4tuNV87Z

Romans 8:31-39 (KJV)

31 What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?

32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?

33 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth.

34 Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?

36 As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.

38 For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come,

39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Hold to God’s Unchanging Hand

Time is filled with swift transition,
Naught of earth unmoved can stand,
Build your hopes on things eternal,
Hold to God’s unchanging hand.

Refrain:
Hold to God’s unchanging hand,
Hold to God’s unchanging hand;
Build your hopes on things eternal,
Hold to God’s unchanging hand.

Trust in Him who will not leave you,
Whatsoever years may bring,
If by earthly friends forsaken
Still more closely to Him cling.

Covet not this world’s vain riches
That so rapidly decay,
Seek to gain the heav’nly treasures,
They will never pass away.

When your journey is completed,
If to God you have been true,
Fair and bright the home in glory
Your enraptured soul will view.

“Agree with God, and be at peace; thereby good will come to you. – Job 22:21

Do you ever put all your hopes into plans and goals? When things don’t work out, you end up grieving over the death of a dream. God wants to give us the desires of our hearts, but we first need to turn them over to Him. Only after submitting to Him can He help us rebuild that dream.

You know that in the past, I have applied and been interviewed for jobs that I really wanted, only I didn’t get them. I was devastated, but the only consolation I could take away is that God is watching over me, and He knew that those jobs were not right for me. The right one will come along.

“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”
2 Peter 3:9

Peter continues to answer the mocking of the false teachers working among the Christians in the early church. They ask, “Where is this coming Jesus promised?” They teach that it’s been too long; Christ is not coming. Don’t resist immorality; there will be no judgment. In verse 8, Peter urged his readers to remember that the Lord is not bound by human time. For God, a thousand years is like a day and vice versa. Peter’s point is that God does not suffer the limitations of time, or confusion about it, the way human beings do.

Here in this verse, Peter insists that we cannot apply human demands about time to the promises of God. He is not slow in keeping His promise. God is the one who made the schedule: He cannot be “late.” Instead, God keeps every promise at the perfect time for His glory and for the good of those He loves.

In this case, Christians should view the delay in Christ’s return as evidence of God’s patience, not of His tardiness. In His love-driven patience, God is willing to give more time for more people to come to repentance. This is God’s plan to allow more people opportunity to place their trust in Christ in order to enter into eternal relationship with Him.

God doesn’t want anyone to perish or die. Peter likely refers to eternal death following God’s judgment on the day of the Lord. The overall message of Scripture is that God does not desire anyone’s damnation. That is, He would prefer that all would be saved. However, in His sovereignty and power, God decided not to demand—force—all people to actually be saved. If God is truly sovereign, He can sovereignly allow us to choose things He does not prefer, for His own reasons. Here, Peter shows us God’s heart for the people He has created: He wants them all to be saved, but He will not force them all to be saved.

As Peter tells us, that’s one reason God allows more time—the very time mocked by the false teachers—prior to the return of Christ. He is mercifully creating more space for more people to repent and turn to Him.

https://www.bibleref.com/2-Peter/3/2-Peter-3-9.html

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. — Galatians 2:20

I am crucified with Christ,…. Not literally, for so only the two thieves were crucified with him, but mystically; Christ was crucified for him in his room and stead, and so he was crucified with him, and in him, as his head and representative. Christ sustained the persons of all his people, and what he did and suffered was in their name, and on their account, and so they were crucified and suffered with him, as they are said to be buried with him, and to be risen with him, and to sit together in heavenly places in him. Moreover, their old man was crucified with him; when he was crucified, all their sins, the whole body of them, were laid upon him, and he bore them, and bore them away, destroyed and made an end of them; they received their mortal wound by his crucifixion and death, so as never to be able to have any damning power over them; and in consequence of this the affections and lusts are crucified, and the deeds of the body of sin mortified by the Spirit and grace of God, in regeneration and sanctification, so as not to have the dominion over them; the world is crucified to them, and they to the world; and this is another reason proving that justification by Christ is no licentious doctrine. This clause is, in the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, put at the end of the preceding verse.

Nevertheless I live; which is to be understood, not of his natural, but of his spiritual life; the life of justification he lived, by faith, on the righteousness of Christ; and the life of sanctification which he had from Christ, by the quickening influences of his Spirit, by virtue of which he walked in newness of life. The believer is a mere paradox, he is dead to the law, and “yet lives” to God; he is crucified with Christ, and yet lives by him; yea, a crucified Christ lives in him.

Yet not I; not the same I as before, but quite another man, a new creature: he did not now live as in his state of unregeneracy, and whilst in Judaism; he was not now Saul the blasphemer, the persecutor, and injurious person; nor did he now live Saul the Pharisee: or the life he had was not of his own obtaining and procuring; his life of righteousness was not of himself, but Christ; his being quickened, or having principles of life and holiness implanted in him, was not by himself, but by the Spirit; and the holy life and conversation he lived was not owing to himself, to his power and strength, but to the grace of God; or it was not properly himself, or so much he that lived,

but Christ liveth in me: who was not only the author and maintainer of his spiritual life, but the life itself; he was formed in his soul, dwelt in his heart, was united to him, was one with him, whence all vital principles and vital actions sprung, and all the communion and comforts of a spiritual life flowed.

And the life which I now live in the flesh; in the body, whilst in this mortal state, whereby he distinguishes that spiritual life he had from Christ, and through Christ’s living in him, both from the natural life of his body, and from that eternal life he expected to live in another world; and which, he says,

I live by the faith of the Son of God; meaning, not that faith which Christ, as man, had, but that of which he is the author and object, by which the just man lives; not upon it, for the believer does not live upon any of his graces, no, not upon faith, but by faith on Christ, the object; looking to him for pardon, righteousness, peace, joy, comfort, every supply of grace, and eternal salvation: which object is described as “the Son of God”; who is truly God, equal with his Father; so that he did not live upon a creature, or forsake the fountain of living waters, but upon the only begotten Son of God, who is full of grace and truth: of whom he further says,

who loved me; before the foundation of the world, from everlasting, prior to his love to him; and freely, without any regard to worth or merit, and though he was a blasphemer and a persecutor; and him personally, and particularly, in a distinguishing manner, of which he had a special knowledge and application by the Spirit of God; and was a reason and argument constraining him, and prevailing on him to live to him who loved him, and died for him, or, as he adds,

and gave himself for me; his whole self, his soul and body, as in union with his divine person, into the hands of justice, and unto death, in his room and stead, as an offering and sacrifice for sin, and which he did freely and voluntarily; and is a strong and full proof of his love to him. Now though Christ gave his life a ransom for many, and himself for his whole church, and all the members of his mystical body, yet the apostle speaks of this matter as singularly respecting himself, as if almost he was the only person Christ loved and died for; which shows that faith deals with Christ not in a general way, as the Saviour of the world, but with a special regard to a man’s self: this is the life of faith; and these considerations of the person, love, and grace of Christ, animate and encourage faith in its exercises on him.

From Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible

The New Year can mean a fresh start, some much needed change, or a continuation of success and happiness. No doubt this new year will bring some changes in my life. I just pray that they are good changes.