My first post.

Once upon a time, many years ago (nearly two thousand) there was an elderly man who knew a great Truth. He had taught this great Truth for many years and the Truth brought great joy to those who learned it. See, he learned the Truth from the Truth when he was a young man. But one day the elderly man looked around him and saw that many who had known the Truth were laying it aside and learning new ideas. Soon the Truth was pushed far to the backs of their minds and the people were learning more and more about the new ideas and remembering less and less about the Truth. This troubled the man. He knew that others had already written the Truth down but, he felt compelled to record the Truth on paper and so the Truth was the Word and the man began to write: In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The elderly man was John the Apostle and at the time he wrote his version of the Gospel, the false teachings of  Gnosticism were spreading rapidly in the Christian world. The idea that many who were once believers in Christ were embracing a new belief system that denied the deity of Jesus and held that the way to true enlightenment was the gaining of knowledge was more than John could bear. So the Holy Ghost moved on John and he wrote down The Gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that no other could compare with. We may never know how many souls were saved by John's Gospel, but we do know that it has been a light to many a sin darkened soul and a source of sound teaching for centuries of Christians.

We are living in much different times than John but, people continue to be led away from the Christ and Christian living at an alarming rate. Never before history has so much information, so many ideas and thoughts been as accessible as they are now. No longer do you have to drive down to the public library and look up information in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Now you can learn virtually anything you want to know form your seat on the school bus, the restroom at Speedway or your booth at Taco Bell by typing a few words into your i Phone. You can sit on your porch and have a conversation  with people anywhere in the world. Now we known that technology itself is not evil.  It's not an issue that we have such easy access to information but, the information we access is where trouble rolls in.

A man walked around on the street of a major city and asked random people questions like, Who is the Vice President? Many didn't know. Some were asked who was their favorite president in history? Several answered Benjamin Franklin. But most could tell him the name of a popular actress' boyfriend. What if the same people were asked questions about Solomon or the Apostle Paul? What if the questions were asked to some of us? Do we know more about Nascar and Hollywood than we do the book of Genesis?  Do we keep closer tabs on the basketball season than we do what's going on in our country? Somewhere in the flood of information we have completely lost sight of what's important. So often God's Holy Word sits idle on the shelf with a layer of dust while we root around in this worlds dirt like a pig in a turnip patch." Ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Timothy 3:7). What kind if ideas are you getting exposed to? Are they rooting out good solid truth in your mind and in your life?  Did you one time have good solid faith? Were you grounded in well established Biblical doctrine? Has something changed? If so what caused the change. It's not too late to look back and see where you may have gone astray. Choose carefully what you allow into your mind by way of music, video, social media, conversations with coworkers/classmates, texts/emails,books magazines. Keep yourself sanctified from the filthiness of the world. Sometime after you read this post I hope you will turn off everything that might distract you, get down somewhere and talk to God, then get up and read a few chapters from the book of John. Until next time keep your mind focused on Jesus and keep making progress.