1. Free to Change
2. Freedom and Responsibility
3. My Kind of People
4. "Come Out And Be Separate"
5. Private Intepretation
6. A "Monkey-Wrench" Scripture
7. The Truth That Frees
8. Literary Devices
9. Fear of God
10. A Love Story
11. The Three Trees In Eden
12. Imputed Righteousness
13. Different Essentials For Different People
14. God's Sons In All Ages
15. Looking To Lust
16. Divorce Her!
17. "While Her Husband Is Alive"
18. "They Won't Let Me Preach!"
19. God's Perplexing Prophets
20. Religous Titles
21. Who Sinned?
22. "I'll Join Your Church"
23. The Church As The Route To Heaven
24. One Hundred Years Old
25. Can Our Churches Unite?
26. Can The Cause Of Sickness Be The Cure?
27. When Life Begins
28. Abortion: Law Or Principle?
29. Human Chattel
30. The Hope of Israel
31. The Great Temptation of Jesus
32. The Rich Man And Lazarus
33. My Hermeneutic
34. Is Immersion Proved By Example?
35. Who Gets The Credit?
36. Hook's Points
37. Heresy
38. I Am A Debtor

Other Books at Freedom's Ring

With a little persuasion some people can be induced to tell you about their health problems. You have heard the story so often that you can tell it yourself with all its embellishments. In short, it goes like this: "I did not get to the hospital a minute too soon. I was scared and praying and about to die. Fortunately, one of the best doctors in the state was there and started working on me. He knew the latest techniques and also used a newly developed drug which worked wonders. Had I not been so lucky to catch that doctor there at that time, I would not be around to tell about it now."

This illustrates a strange mentality that is seen among us too commonly. We are people who supposedly turn our lives over to God and pray to him to care for our needs. Then when a crisis is over, we give the credit to ourselves or other persons, leaving God out of it.

The incredible thing about this outlook is that when others claim that God has intervened in their lives, we deny that he did. We pray for the sick, but then our preacher may publicly challenge anyone to prove that God heals people in answer to prayer. By denying that he will intervene, we are giving the credit for healing to nature, ourselves, or Satan, but not to God!

How can disciples develop the mentality that will more readily give credit for good things to Satan than to God? When someone tells how the Spirit worked in his life giving some special direction or solving some specific problem, do you deny that the Spirit did it? Why are you so reluctant to give praise to God for it? Is it simply because you disagree with that person on some doctrinal issues?

People have been driven from our fellowship because they have claimed to speak in an ecstatic language enabled by the Spirit. Because he has not given me such an experience, am I to conclude that he gives it to no one? Am I such a judge of what God will or will not do that I can boldly attribute that which I do not understand to the devil? Supposing the tongue-speaker is self-deluded, is his giving God credit for something like that which draws him closer to God going to damn his soul? If it proves to be that the Spirit actually worked in the person and I give the credit to Satan, that does not put me in a very enviable position___a believer giving Satan credit for God's work!

If a person gives God praise for special subjective experiences which made him more conscious of God in his life, why should other disciples become upset? Lack of awareness of God's constant presence and his indwelling Spirit can cause one to deny that realization in others.

Many times when I have been writing, some point has come to mind clearly that I had never thought of before and that I was not trying to discover. A number of people have told me that my writings were inspired. Wait a minute; I am not even hinting that I have delivered any new oracle from God. I don't know whether the Spirit worked in me or not. I am saying that the Spirit might want my readers to see some point that neither I nor they have understood and that he may be guiding me into that previously revealed truth. Does that sound too presumptuous on my part? Well, which is the more acceptable___to thank God for the enlightenment of his Spirit within me, or to say that I thought of it all by myself without any help from the Spirit, thank you? Who gets the credit?

Some believe that God may let something bad happen to children in order to discipline the parents, or that he might bring disease to the one who drinks to correct him. It has been proposed that AIDS has been sent by God in order to punish our national sexual promiscuity and highly flaunted homosexuality. My first reaction has always been that God does not make the innocent suffer while punishing the wicked. But is that right? Bible history is filled with examples of the judgments against a particular sin bringing suffering upon the innocent. I am saying that I do not know the answer, but if I give credit for these bad things to Satan or to nature when God is actually allowing and using them to discipline his people, then I am working against the will of the Lord. My second-guessing of God's intentions can put me in a bad spot. Evil things have their origin in Satan, but God can use them to accomplish his purposes.

When we speak of good fortune, luck, chance, and circumstantial happenings, we reveal our contentment with leaving God out of our thinking. We are unwilling to admit that he still notices the sparrow's fall or a nation's fall. It is nothing short of the work of God that communism could be brought to collapse without military force. Why give the credit to Gorbachev and his glasnost? Gorbachev is being used but is not the cause of it.

Why doesn't God work wonders in your life or in that of your congregation? Perhaps you are quenching the spirit. When Jesus went back to his own hometown, "He could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands upon a few sick people and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief" (Mark 6:5f). They could and did limit the powers of Jesus! So can we.

When Jesus was healing people, some attributed the cures to Satanic powers (Matt. 12:22-32). This brought Jesus' warning about blasphemy against the Spirit. I am in awe to think how many of us have quenched the Spirit and blasphemed against him by claiming to know the mind of God and by giving credit for his works to "natural causes," men, and Satan instead of praising him.

Even the pagans with no revelation of God except nature were expected to honor God and give thanks to him (Rom. 1:18f). If they were to attribute the inexplicable things to God, how can enlightened disciples become so wise as to deny divine intervention? There is a loud and frightening message here!

When Joseph was sold by his brothers, served as a slave, and suffered imprisonment, he probably did not praise God for all that, but he did continue to consider God in his conduct. Later he could see that God used the bad and the good to accomplish his plan, and he gave God the glory for it (Gen. 45:5f; 50:20f).

Surely, sin and death came through the power of Satan, but Paul could see God's plan work through Christ to bring him glory and praise, and he shouts, "Thanks be to God who gives us victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!" (1 Cor. 15:57).

After reviewing God's dealing with mankind through history, Paul fans away the chaff of human wisdom in his comprehensive exclamation of praise: "O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable are his ways! 'For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor?' 'Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid?' For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory for ever. Amen." (Rom. 11:33-36). His ways are beyond our limited perception. Let us join in praise for his actions which are too intricate for our comprehension.

We, with our shrunken faith and such limited knowledge, need desperately to open our hearts to God's power in us "...that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with might through his Spirit in the inner man...that you may be filled with all the fulness of God. Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen." (Eph. 3:14-21). Believing that he does so work in us, let us be quick to give him the credit and praise.