No Turning Back!

Saturday 1-9-16 (Home in Modesto, California)     

Scripture reading for today:    Gen 23 - 24     Luke 9

S=Scripture  O=Observation  A=Application  P=Prayer  SOAP for the soul.

S.  Gen 24:5-8  And the servant said to him, "Perhaps the woman will not be willing to follow me to this land. Must I take your son back to the land from which you came?" But Abraham said to him, "Beware that you do not take my son back there.  The LORD God of heaven, who took me from my father's house and from the land of my family, and who spoke to me and swore to me, saying, 'To your descendants I give this land,' He will send His angel before you, and you shall take a wife for my son from there.  And if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be released from this oath; only do not take my son back there."  NKJV

O.  Abraham instructed his servant to return to the land where he had come from to seek a wife for his son Isaac.  “But what if she refuses to come with me?  Shall I take your son back to the land where you came from?”  “No way!” Abraham insisted, “God brought me out of that place and has given me this new land.  I don’t want my son to turn his back on my, and now his, God-given inheritance.

A.  I often teach children to sing, “I have decided to follow Jesus... No turning back... No turning back.”  My heart is troubled by a friend who claims he has turned back.  He seemed to start well.  He even says he taught a Sunday School class.  But somewhere he stumbled and started to place his faith in the flimsy theories of men like Darwin and he made an about-face and turned back and pulled his wife with him.  I recently told him that his chosen road requires a great deal more faith than mine.  It takes great “faith” to accept a theory that insists that intricate, complicated design can create itself without a designer.  Anyone who accepts that has great, “religious faith”... for no scientist has ever witnessed that happening and any serious thinker knows that it is totally unreasonable. 

P.  I pray today again for my friend.  You know, Lord, that he bases his “faith” in the unstable froth of men’s concepts.  It is interesting how many of those who turn back, continue to live honorable lives, maintaining the Christian life-style that they inherited, but denying the author of that life style.  Outwardly they appear to be kind, honest Christians, but their hearts have turned back and they leave You, my Christ, out of their lives.  Dear Lord Jesus, You gave Your life to save that man, too.  Draw him with cords of love to follow You once more.  Amen.

Ralph