Special Guests, Steve and Oddny Gumaer

Welcome and Prayer: Nancy Lopez

Good Morning RefleXion!           The Lord is with you!

A couple of weeks ago, in a Jeremiah passage, Chuck taught about the two baskets of figs – one good and one bad; do you remember?  This was helpful to me because I’d already been thinking about Good and Evil.  I heard Chuck say that Evil does not always refer to moral wickedness.  It can be fruit gone bad.

I came across a similar idea from David Benner that Evil can be seen as an anti-life posture.  He says, “It is that which kills the spirit, deeply wounds the soul, and sometimes destroys the body.”  It is not Good.  Goodness is deeper and broader than morality.  It is the radical out-pouring of God’s character and life. Evil is not only the absence of Good; it is the fruit of a lie.  Satan is called the Deceiver; the Father of Lies can never be trusted that his ideas will end well, or Good.

Last week, Chuck said that we can be “increasers of Goodness.”  I want to be that; and I know you do too.  How can we BE Goodness?  It starts with abiding in Truth (God’s Reality).  If we don’t start with Truth, we start with a lie, and this outflow (we can call it rotten fruit) is Evil.  As maturing Christians, we are more and more able to, and called to, discern Goodness.  If something that “looks good” is the product of a lie, can it ever be Good?  Will you think about that?

And these ideas are not just external phenomena; we must remember to recognize our capacity to deceive ourselves. The lies we tell ourselves – the subtle ways in which we bend reality, the masks we create to defend against knowing our own capacity for evil, these things require hard work, radical honesty, and courage under the tutelage of the Holy Spirit.

And, finally, we remember that love will always triumph over evil, for it is the heartbeat of Christ that holds everything in the cosmos in love, and that draws everything forward into fullness of being in Christ.  Let’s be a part of that evolution by being increasers of goodness, based on Truth.

Will you join me in Prayer? 

Heavenly Father, deliver us from evil, from the lies and deceptions surrounding us and from our own Ego’s deceptions.  May our new hearts beat more and more to the drum of Truth and Goodness.  May Goodness overwhelm us and cause the fruits of the Spirit to sprout, bloom, and propagate. We remember that you said, Lord Jesus, that you chose us and appointed us that we might bear fruit, much fruit, and fruit that will last.  May it be so.  Amen

Morning Talk: Steve and Oddny Gumaer

This week, November1-18 you can view the service by clicking on the “watch life” tab in the right column. You can also listen to the Podcast, but miss the visual references.