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The Present
Truth Magazine (Email)
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FROM THE EDITOR’S HEART
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child… (1 Cor. 13:11). When I got out on my own, reality came to live with me. Bargain shopping was more than a sport; it was a necessity. I became somewhat of a cheapskate (incidentally, Webster defines a cheapskate as “one who tries to avoid his share of costs…”). Somewhere along my pilgrimage with the Lord, He showed me that I had brought that “Wal-Mart mentality” into my kingdom life—I felt I could get anything I wanted at a low price. As I looked at my pattern Jesus, I saw that the opposite was true. Jesus paid the ultimate price, His very life. He didn’t come to get His wants; He came to do the Father’s will. We are to have this same testimony. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked (1 John 2:6). Jesus told His disciples that as they lost everything, they would gain everything and more (Mark 10:29-30). Apostle Paul understood the rewards of giving his all. …I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ…that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death…(Phil. 3:8, 10). Like my mama always said, “You get what you pay for.” Let us give the Lord our best this Easter season so that we can receive His best and enjoy the fullness of this resurrection life.
Sincerely in Christ,
THE LAST DISCIPLE is a well-written novel that
is a good alternative to the left-behind series. It is written from
what we consider a partial-preterist viewpoint; i.e. that the
great-tribulation and most of the book of revelation was written about and
fulfilled in the first century. Reading it is an excellent way to both
enjoy a novel and gain a scriptural understanding of how Jesus' and His
apostles prophecies were fulfilled in the first century.
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We are glad to have you as a subscriber to our Present Truth Magazine. Below you will find articles from individual authors who have written for our magazine. Our prayer for all who receive read these articles is that the Lord "...may give to you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, and what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Ephesians 1:17-18).
Resurrection of the Dead
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Growing
up in a loving home with hard-working parents, I never really thought
much about the household budget. I always had everything I needed and
got many things I wanted. 
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When
we die physically, we will not go to Sheol, Hades, or purgatory. Rather,
we will transition into our “spiritual bodies” (1 Cor. 15:44), like the
“firstborn Son” of the new creation (Acts 13:30-33; Rom. 8:29). 
no
part dark” (Luke 11:36). What a powerful statement to
ponder. 
would
have to be found to offer animal sacrifices, since all of the Jewish
records of priestly linage were destroyed in 70 A.D. This vision being
proclaimed by many conservative Christians is the source of much of the
Mideast conflict. The truth is that a new rebuilt temple in our day
would have no more spiritual or biblical significance than the St. Louis
Arch.  | Alzheimer’s drugs…to improve attention and memory. |
| Amphetamines…to learn how to play the piano. |
| Transcranial magnetic stimulation…to improve the mood of healthy people who are just having an off day. |
Dr. Chatterjee also had some reservations about medical treatments to enhance performance in normal people: “…struggling with pain builds character…getting a boost without doing the work is cheating” (Springfield News-Leader, 9-28-04; also referenced in the Wall Street Journal, 10-1-04).
“Without doing the work.” This insightful neurologist has discovered one of the keys to successful living—character development requires work.
To thrive and be happy, all individuals must continue to grow psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually, which often requires unpleasant “growth work” (pressure, stress, pain, boredom, unselfish choices, etc.). Character growth through enduring unpleasantness will produce noble-mindedness and happiness that is not dependent on environment or circumstances. Circumventing this necessary growth process will produce “artificial-mindedness” with environmentally-dependent happiness (no change in the inner man).
The apostle Paul encountered differences in character between two of his fledgling Christian communities. He wrote in Acts 17:11,
These (Bereans) were more fair-minded than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness, and searched the Scriptures daily to find out whether these things were so.
The Berean Christians were willing to do the work necessary to grow, with resultant character growth and noble-mindedness. Apparently, the Thessalonian Christians were not as eager to do this work, with resultant shallower character.
Paul also mentioned character development through enduring unpleasantness when he wrote to the Roman Christians: “…knowing that tribulation produces perseverance, and perseverance, (produces) character…” (Rom. 5:3-4). Jesus’ own brother James understood this as well when he wrote:
My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience (endurance). But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing (James 1:2-4).
Both
of these apostles understood that enduring unpleasantness and growing
thereby would produce the character of God in an individual—and God is a
happy individual who has the ability to perform at the highest levels
possible! God’s happy character on the inside of any person will enhance
that person’s performance better than any plastic remedy.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us…(Eph. 3:20).
Jonathan Clark is an elder of Abundant Life Covenant Church and a physician in Springfield, Missouri.
God Is
Faithful
By Jim Hunt
I was born and raised in Rolla, Missouri, and went to Sunday school for the first four or five years of my life. My mother eventually quit taking us kids to church, and she herself seldom went after that. I don’t know why she stopped, maybe because the church she attended built a new building on the other side of town and it was too far to walk.
After going to college for a year, I dropped out and found a job. I had felt guilty about my parents having to pay for college when they had so little themselves. In June 1967 I entered the Army and was sent to Vietnam as an infantryman. I was assigned to the 196th Light Infantry Brigade in the I Corp.
One Sunday, after some very intense battles and firefights, we secured a spot on the side of a mountain and were resupplied and given a hot meal. A chaplain had come on the chopper and held several small services, one of which I attended. I remember asking God to stop the killing and let me go home in one piece. Not long after that Sunday, my company (about 85 men) found a North Vietnam Army base camp, and two of our guys were killed and several wounded. The next morning after only a few minutes, we had lost 46 more men who were killed or wounded. I was so disgusted; I remember thinking “So much for prayer. Why do people really bother?”
Through the years the Holy Spirit quietly watched over me and began to make obvious the reality of His presence. In 2003 the Holy Spirit chose me to join in covenant with Jesus Christ and reveal the truth of the Holy Kingdom.
Last summer I had just finished talking on the phone with one of the men I served with in Vietnam, and after I hung up, the Holy Spirit revealed that my prayer of so many years ago in fact was answered! The killing indeed had stopped, and I did get home in one piece with a few metal souvenirs! Prayers do get answered.
Jim Hunt is a retired postal worker.
The
Goodness of Affliction
by Leesa Hamilton
Before I was afflicted I went astray,
But now I keep Your word (Ps. 119:67).
Father,
Grant me the gift of adversity
When I reach the end of my frail humanity
And find in the darkness
The essence of life…YOU.The joy of complete emptiness
In the struggle of self-sufficiency,
Where I surrender only to look
Into Your face and find divine joy.Let me experience the goodness of affliction
And rediscover the cleansing of the crucifixion,
The glory of a resurrected life
Co-reigning with heartfelt mercy and abiding truth.For I welcomed the season of refreshing
Where pressures and trials were lifted;
But I have found that staying here too long
Leaves me complacent and apathetic
To the things that occupy Your heart.I have come to know
That poverty is not about money.
It’s about the emptiness of life lived
Without You at the center.Peace is not the absence of problems
Or the non-existence of war.
It is the absolute knowing that I am not
And yet You are…in total control,
And You are good.Thank You for the gift of affliction
Which you apply in just the right doses,
The medicine of the Great Physician
Who keeps me and makes me whole.Leesa Hamilton and her husband Byron own Med-Soft National Training Institute in Springfield, Missouri.
Addiction-Free Living
By Lisa Krueger
Several years ago I came to a place where I believed I needed to quit smoking cigarettes. They were becoming rather expensive, and an x-ray revealed some minor lung damage.
I had tried to quit previously but had actually ended up smoking more than before I tried to stop. This time was different. I sat quietly before the Lord and admitted that I could not be freed from this habit on my own. I could not muster up enough willpower. This was one of my first lessons on how not to be in control.
As I sat there, I knew the Lord would equip me to overcome this physical addiction. I thanked Him for helping me and began to walk out my deliverance. I went to the store and purchased nicotine gum, my favorite flavor of sugar-free gum, mints, and orange juice. I used the nicotine gum for less than a week. I used it sparingly, replacing it with the regular gum. When I would feel the urge to smoke, I would drink a glass of water or juice and then use the gum or mints.
This all happened in the spring of 1996. Later that year, I became pregnant for the second time and was in my prenatal doctor’s waiting room reading a magazine. The article I was reading said that vitamin C picks up nicotine from a person’s system, and drinking juices high in vitamin C along with appropriate daily amounts of water could help eliminate nicotine more quickly and efficiently from the body. I sat in amazement as I reflected back to what I had done—in obedience to the Lord—to help me quit smoking.
I have an all-knowing Father who took a teachable moment to make known His love for me. He could have simply taken the unhealthy habit from me. Instead, He orchestrated these events to help me see that as I trust and obey, He will enable me to live an overcoming lifestyle.
Lisa Krueger is a homemaker in Springfield, Missouri.
Building Faith With God
By Gavin Walker
I bought a business about a year ago. It took a great act of faith on my part to do this because I could see that I would have to grow the business in order to meet my current income requirements. At my prior job, I had not needed as much faith because no matter how bad I messed up or failed to trust in God, the checks would keep coming every other week. In my mind, I knew that my source of income was from God, but in practice it sure was easy to become accustomed to the checks being deposited like clockwork.
During the past year, I have learned many things—the most important being that faith in and with God is the only way to run a business. My source is still God, but now I get paid from many different customers and sources. This causes my income to fluctuate greatly. There were many times this past year when I got busy doing work and fell back into my old habit patterns of trying to bring in business by my own steam rather than trusting in the Lord. Without a renewed mind, this caused me to focus on the money rather than meeting the needs of people.
I began to seek the Lord first about where I needed to spend my time. He spoke to my spirit, “Build relationships, and meet needs with a servant’s heart and attitude.” I knew as I obeyed, He would be faithful to meet my needs.
I also started coming to the Lord in faith to ask that my needs be met every month. When I fail to do this, my finances show it. I have found that the Lord does not necessarily meet my needs the moment I ask. Sometimes He will wait—even until the last day. During one particular month, the Lord provided what I asked for by bringing in over half of our month’s income on the last business day of the month. Talk about stretching and learning to lean on the Lord! The Lord is indeed good. He knew that if He met my need on the first day of the month, I would have coasted the rest of the month.
The Lord has also taught me that it is my job to plant seeds of faith throughout the region and His job to make it grow. Matthew 13:31-32 says:
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and planted in his field. Though it is the smallest of all your seeds, yet when it grows, it is the largest of garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and perch in its branches.”
Even though the seeds I am planting may be small, the Lord is going to cause them to grow and flourish into a prosperous business that will rightly represent the kingdom in my community.
I titled this article “Building Faith With God” because He is partnering with me, giving me mustard seeds of faith. My part is to simply take them and plant them.
Gavin Walker and his wife Cassandra own MedTech Medical Management Systems in Springfield, Missouri.
The Music In My Ears
By Matt Christy
I have long been a huge fan of music. As a kid, I had my own portable AM radio, which back in that day still picked up rock-and-roll stations. By the time all the good guitar rock fled to the land of FM, I’d upgraded my player of choice to a handy little AM/FM pre-Walkman unit. From there I later moved to the posh surroundings of an AM/FM cassette boom box, circa 1986 styling, which inevitably gave way to various portable tape decks, culminating in the radiantly bright yellow waterproof Sony Walkman. These units all served me quite well, allowing me to groove on all the best 70s and 80s rock and roll. Def Leppard, Dire Straits, Doobie Brothers, Pink Floyd… you name it, I listened to it. Of course, having a brother four years older (and thus “in the scene” as it were) had a big influence on the kinds of music to which I listened.
As the years rolled on, I eventually traded up my meager tape collection for the magic of CDs. While still enjoying most popular music via radio, my CD collection steadily grew as each paycheck found its way through my hands to the local shops. While I tended to stay away from things like hardcore gangster rap and the like, I still listened to more than my fair share of heavy metal, grunge, punk, and techno-rave. I had heard of this thing called “Christian music” growing like an aberration in the music industry, but I paid it no attention. I believed all Christian music catered to those acoustic guitar-strumming, “kum-bay-a singing” hippies.
Of course, God had a much different perspective.
I had long given up my tired old Sony Discmans for an in-dash MP3 player for the car, having converted all my many CDs to this new compression format so I could keep them on my computer instead of in those racks along the wall. I had been an “early adopter” of the new technology, and as such, I fell into many bad (illegal) habits along the way. While my collection of music had grown almost exponentially over the years, nothing compared to the explosive growth incurred with a certain program which allowed me to download music files from other people off the internet. I became the worst sort of leech, downloading hundreds of songs at a time while never sharing any of my own. I only cared about having copies of all the songs I’d enjoyed listening to growing up. At first, it didn’t occur to me that downloading songs from the internet was illegal. By the time Metallica started suing people for downloading their music, my pride kept me in deception; I thought I wasn’t hurting anything since I didn’t share my collection with anyone.
During this time, I encountered Christian music again, with far better results than earlier experiences. I discovered there were many groups on the scene I actually enjoyed. Eventually—fairly early in the overall picture of musicians’ rights and RIAA litigation—I stopped downloading MP3s.
In 2001, Apple Computer released the paradigm-shifting gem known simply as iPod. Recognized for my “gadget geekery” of the first degree, I coveted after this prize of music portability. I watched like a kid through a toy store window as the iPod evolved over the years. Finally, in 2003, I purchased the ultimate in portable music enjoyment. Soon after my iPod arrived in the mail, I copied over my entire collection and popped the ear buds in to enjoy my new toy. Immediately I noticed just how much the ear buds hurt to wear. Having had buds in the past, I knew it could take some time for my ears to acclimate to the new method of music delivery and thus decided to simply put up with the pain for the gain of true music portability.
I began systematically deleting certain groups of MP3s from my collection, and my fiancée encouraged me to give up secular music entirely, as she had been shown to do early on in her rededication to following Holy Spirit’s direction. I resisted at first, but as she continued to show me new groups, I discovered Christian music I enjoyed—groups like Jars of Clay, Skillet, Caedmon’s Call, Jennifer Knapp. I opened my heart to Holy Spirit and began deleting more and more of my collection.
But my ears still really hurt when listening to the iPod.
I tried new headphones, different lengths of time between listening and not listening, and even different orientations of the headphones to try and alleviate the pain. No matter what I tried, as soon as I turned the iPod on, my ears started hurting. After about three months of fidgeting, fussing, and fighting with my iPod’s earphones and buds, I happened upon a nice quiet time of listening to the iPod without my ears hurting. Upon further investigation, I realized I had been listening to Christian music at the time. I decided to investigate a little further, reformatting my iPod and only copying over Christian music. The next day, I plugged in the headphones and, to my surprise, not a bit of ear pain the entire day. On day two of the experiment, I plugged in the long forgotten ear buds and headed off to work. Again, I experienced no ear pain the entire day.
That night, I went through my entire collection, and if it wasn’t Christian (and legally obtained), I deleted it. My original collection ballooned to more than 2800 songs. After the purge, I had fewer than 600 songs. Now, less than a year later, my wife and I have over 7600 songs in our collection, all Christian, all legal.
God showed me through this experience it was not the manner in which I listened to the music but rather the music itself that caused the pain. Legal issues aside (I no longer endorse piracy in any form), the content in the music directly affected the pain I felt in my ears. The Lord showed me the messages those old songs put forth were no longer fit for me to listen to as a new creation believer, as they affected both my thoughts and my heart.
Music has always been an integral part of my life. It affects both my moods and my attitudes. I choose now, however, to follow Christ’s leading and listen only to music which influences those moods and attitudes after His own heart.
And my iPod ear buds feel great!
Matt Christy is an information technology support specialist for the Springfield Public Schools.