Grace by the Stream

This was sent to me by the great grandson of the author. I thought it deserved a wider audience so here it is. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did. 

THE ORIGINAL

REV. PAUL H. ANDREE, 1878 – 1970

This is a day of great inventions: new types, new styles, new designs, a rush towards quick beauty, ready usefulness and plans to make things easy. There are new high-powered medicines, skillful surgery and all kinds of new foods.

But there is more dissatisfaction, unhappiness, discontent, more diseases, more plaguing of old people with needles and tubes than ever before. Is there no balm in Gilead? No physicians there? Where is the good way? God’s way, the good way is to go back to the original. God’s plan is perfect. Man cannot improve on it. We can only discover it like the treasure found in the field.

I read in the life of one of our great artists that he studied mixed colors, and was working day and night until his eyes and brain were in a state of collapse. One day he stopped and went and took a hot bath, got a hair cut and shave, scrubbed his hands, put on new clean clothes that he had never worked in and then went out in the country to a farm. He lay down on his stomach and looked at the green grass, then turned over on his back and looked at the blue sky, then at the beautiful red sunset and at night at the starry heavens.

The farmer saw him and thought something was wrong. He went to him to see what it was all about. The artist said,”I have studied the instructions of men. I have seen their blending of different colors until they all seem to run together. Please let me alone that I may wash my eyes and mind of man-made mixtures and see God’s original colors. They are so healing and refreshing and so perfect when man doesn’t mix them.”

I have read and studied all kinds of mixtures of man-made religion, new methods and theories, Mr. Wiseman and talkative Formalist, until my head has reeled. I am fully convinced that what God wants us to do is to have a complete clean-up of colors and smells, a real break with the brain trust specialists, and to come to God’s farm of green pastures and still waters. The cedar perfumes of

Lebanon, the garden of spices, and the alabaster box of human love and kindness, a large dose of repentance. We need to see that our unbelief is as black has hell itself, and ask God to wash us clean, and make us a temple of the Holy Ghost. Bring us back to God’s farm of original Apostolic Bible Christianity. Oh, what beautiful, healthful colors these are compared to all the different man-made mixtures of this day. My daily prayer to God, Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost is, “I want the original.”

Rev Paul H Andree, Sr

Retired Elder

Look at Zech 9:12. I have been meditating on that verse and especially the part about being a prisoner of hope. Those two things just don’t seem to make sense together but if you are under our Lord Jesus Christ then you can get it. We are called to give up our rights. To give up our wants. To give up even our desires in favor of what Christ wants for us. By giving up so much we can see how we are defined as prisoners but because we know Jesus we still have our hope. Hope in Him.

If you have been around me very long you know how I answer the question “how are you?” I normally say “Better then I deserve”. I started that about 5 years ago when I heard Dave Ramsey say it on his radio show and it has certainly served me well in the area of starting a conversation. It goes a little like this:

How are you?
Better than I deserve!!
What do you mean, you deserve a lot?
Well, I don’t want what I deserve, I like grace and mercy better.

You see, it started a conversation about salvation and I love it for that but now Dave Ramsey is in our Atlanta market and the conversation is different now. They assume I am a Dave Ramsey listener and while I am and that is a good thing I don’t want that to be the conversation most of the time.

I am asking God to give me something else to start that conversation with and I think this might be it. When someone asks “how are you?” I can say “I am a prisoner of hope” and see where that goes. My goal is to startle people a bit. To get them to stop and pay attention for a brief minute and to have a chance to ask questions if they want. I want to share about the relationship I have with Christ. Not to sound preachy or judgmental but to be salt and light as our Lord asked us to be.

We’ll see what God does with this but for now, I am a prisoner of hope and loving every minute of it.

It’s a good life!!
Jerry Robertson

Guatemala is a long way from here. I am more aware of that today as my youngest son, Stephen is headed that way as I write this. We dropped him off at 12Stone church at 5:45am and they are flying down today for a week of service and opportunity. I am sure he will be changed more than the Guatemalans might be changed but I have to say it is changing me too. I have traveled a lot outside our borders and I know how it feels but he does not. I am excited to hear what he has to say when he gets back.

I am proud of him for his willingness to go on a trip like this rather than one to the beach or to just hang out. He is doing something that God has led him to do and I am pleased he is listening. At 17 that is an awesome feat.

Please pray for him (and for Mom and me) while he is off on this trip. Pray for the team and their safety but also for God’s hand to be present on them as He blesses them. Pray for God’s favor on all of them. I believe that they are seeking to be about what God is blessing. That is the best any of us can do. Ask God what he is going to bless and then go there. You will be blessed in the effort.

Thanks for your time.
Jerry Robertson

We forget that all the necessary work has been done for our salvation. Sometimes we strive to please God and I don’t want you to stop doing your best but please do it for the right reason. I heard it explained this way.

What is the difference between religion and Christianity? It is the same difference between ‘DO’ and ‘DONE’. Religion is something you DO. Christianity is about what Christ has already DONE. Do you see it? Do you understand the meaning of it? I have been thinking about this and today I read some of Ephesians and this is what I saw. It is by grace alone that we are saved.

When someone religious talks to us about doing this or doing that we need to remember that it may be a good thing to do but it does not affect our position in the Kingdom of God. We are saved by grace, not by works is what Paul says to the believers. I would go so far to say that if the religious person says anything other than this you need to examine their religion very carefully because it may not be what it seems to be. Now this does not give you a license to do whatever you want. Paul says that too but don’t confuse being obedient with being saved.

 We are not judges. It is not our place to judge non-believers as some religions do. We are not attorneys. We can not argue anyone into right relationship with God. We are witnesses. We are to tell what we know from our experience, our seeing, our hearing. We are to live a life that is attractive to others. One of grace and peace as much as we can.

Remember that when someone confronts you with a ‘works’ theology. Come back to them with grace and peace and witness to them what God has done for you. That is our calling.

Hope. My dog has hope. It almost seems like eternal hope. No matter what I say to him he still has hope. Hope of a scrap from the table or a stroke on his ears. He will jump up on the chair and lay down just to get warm or to give warmth. Hope. I heard another mention of hope yesterday. The reference came from Zech 9:12  Return to your fortress, O prisoners of  hope ;  even now I announce that I will restore twice as much to you. Are you a prisoner of hope? The idea has just penetrated my thinking the last couple of days. God tells us to return to your fortress. We are prisioners of hope. To believe in God is to allow ourselves to be prisoners but prisoners of a benevolent captor. God has captured us with his Word and his promises. This promise is to restore to us twice what we have lost for his sake. It is not a reference to material blessings in this world although it could be. That is up to Him. The promise of childhood is one I love too. To be a child of God. Adopted into his family and heirs with Christ. That is a promise he makes to us. To live FOREVER as a prisoner of God. That is what I strive for. He promises to come for us and take us to be where he is and I can hardly wait. Until that comes though I will choose to be his captive. To trust him no matter what.

In His hands.
Jerry

Here is my response to the query from my friend. This was an email exchange and some of it might not flow as smoothly as my blog so please allow a little grace.

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Offended? No. I don’t see any reason to be offended. He has assumed that the Theory of Evolution is truth and that somehow God is using it but I have some basic problems with that premise. If we are to accept what God says in his Word then we have to accept it all. If I begin to pick and choose what I believe then where is the foundation for my belief? I believe that God meant what he said in Genesis when he says he created the universe is 6 days. I have no problem with the distances involved or the fact that he could put light in motion and have it appear to have traveled great distances or that dinosaurs existed before the flood.

Evolution requires survival of the fittest and that means death to get to the evolved man. The bible says that death did not come into play until after man sinned and tried to be god himself. No death, no evolution.

My belief is that there are rational explanations to these questions regarding fossils, apparent age and stratification using a great flood theory. The fact is that there is NO evidence of evolution any more than there is evidence of creation that we can test and prove today. Faith is required in either case. There is no physical evidence of any cross species evolution. Micro-scale evolution, yes. Flowers mutate based on environment. Butterflies, moths, fish, mammals and many other species adapt to the environment but they do not change from reptiles into birds, etc.

I think we suffer under the idea that “God said it and I believe it without question” and many fundamentalists operate that way. Christians get a reputation based on the behavior of those that we see in the news and we know that just may not be the whole picture. Most of the country thinks about Christians as being against homosexuality or abortion or smoking or drinking and the like but I want to be known by what I am FOR, not what I am AGAINST.

I believe that God made us curious for a reason. He wants us to learn about his creation and to enjoy what he has made. That used to be the whole basis for science until the last 100 years or so. The earth today is a mere shadow of what once was, in the perfect creation he made. It now groans under the curse of sin just like we do. It will be redeemed along with us in the end but for now it is all we have physically and we are responsible to be good managers of it. I think that includes learning all we can about His creation.

There is a bias in science today that tries to exclude God because he cannot not be measured or felt or smelled, etc. but I like the analogy that your email brought up. I suspect the exclusion has more to do with submission to God if we have to admit he exists than it does with the empirical evidence dispute. My goal is to be curious. To search with an open mind and try to interpret the data but I am forced to do that with a bias of my own. The whole idea of science is to put forth a theory and then to go about trying to prove or disprove it based on the facts. Either bias can do that but we have to look at it honestly. If the data does not fit our theory then we have to make a change to the theory or see if we have interpreted the data correctly. It may be we have a limited amount of data and the more we dig, the more we understand the reality.

There is a story about a scientist who had a trained cockroach. He had trained it to jump on command. In order to study the ability of the cockroach the scientist set up a hurdle and got a tape measure, stop watch and a notebook. He placed the cockroach in front of the hurdle and said “JUMP”. The cockroach jumped and the scientist wrote into the notebook the height and distance the cockroach jumped and how long it took. He then picked up the cockroach and pulled the back two legs off it. Placing it in front of the hurdle again he commanded it to “JUMP”. The cockroach did but it was not as high or as far and it took longer to do the task. Again the scientist wrote all the information in the book and picked up the cockroach, this time pulling the front legs off. Placing the cockroach again in front of the hurdle he said “JUMP” and the cockroach did. It took much longer to complete the task as it barely made the climb this time over the hurdle. The scientist made notes again about the time and distance and finally he picked up the cockroach again pulling the middle two legs off. He placed the cockroach down in front of the hurdle and commanded it to “JUMP”. … Nothing happened. Again he said “JUMP” and nothing happened. After 3 more attempts to get the cockroach to obey he wrote in his book “Subject refused to jump. I can only conclude that pulling the middle two legs off a cockroach makes it deaf.”

He had a bias and judged the data accordingly. We all do that but if we are truly curious then maybe we will try to see what the data actually says and adapt our theory to it instead. Is God big enough to stand all this curiosity? Of that I have no doubt. He not only can stand it, he relishes it. It is his desire to know us and to be known by us. That is the whole reason he came in the form of a man just so we could know him. In the time of Adam and Eve, God was over us. He came and walked with them in the cool of the evening and sought to be their companion. They violated his only rule and tried to take his place in their own lives but God had a plan. While He was over us in that time he later became Emmanuel which means God With Us. We as humans could touch and hear and smell, etc. God in the flesh. Jesus himself claimed to be God. If you don’t believe that to be true then start reading John in the New Testament. He said over and over again that he was GOD and it ticked off the religious leaders so bad they had him killed. He allowed himself to be killed as a sacrifice to reconcile us to him and what replaced him “with us” was the Holy Spirit who is now God IN Us. He inhabits our very being and while I don’t fully understand it, I believe it is true because I have experienced it. His Spirit is connected to my spirit and that is just more than I deserve. It is by his grace that I am saved and I love it.

I agree with Don that the Universe is a wonderful and amazing place both theologically and scientifically. I do not believe that we have to try and fit God into any box. He won’t fit. Is it possible that God is using a time span of billions of years? I suppose it is but how does that fit with scripture? I believe that all of the scripture is truth. I don’t however believe that all the truth is in scripture. I am sure there are things that we don’t know or see yet but we will in time. I don’t believe that it is an either / or situation here. I think it is a bias in how we choose to interpret the data we have. My challenge is to not be a fundamentalist either way. Not in evolution or creation. Be curious instead and seek to understand what God has to say about his creation and himself. I would contend that he makes himself known to us in the very things we see, feel, smell, taste and hear. To deny that is to be a fundamentalist.

If you want to see a more organized, structured approach on a creation bias to the data then go to www.icr.org and do a little looking around. There are lots of other resources but this is one that I find helpful.