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Philip Conley's Morning Thoughts

Morning Thoughts (Mark 4:37 – “Losing Your Head”)

Morning Thoughts,

“Losing Your Head”

Mark 4:37, “And there arose a great storm of wind, and the waves beat into the ship, so that it was now full.”

This morning, the Bible continues to amaze with its richness and depth. After repeated passes through its pages over the years, I never cease to be amazed at what “new” things are found each time. No matter how many times you squeeze the passages, honey keeps pouring out. One of the death knells of a disciple of the Lamb, and especially to a minister of the gospel, is to develop the mindset about Scripture and say, “I got that.” Scripture warns about thinking we know something more than we do or have our situation figured out. (I Corinthians 8:2, 10:12) The study verse before us sits within a story that I have attempted to preach about many times in the past. The story is rich and full of doctrinal weight as well as practical lessons. Yet, for all my reading, studying, meditating, and eventually preaching on this lesson, I recently saw something that previous glances had missed.

The story before us is the wonderful account of Christ calming the wind and seas with a simple command, “Peace, be still.” (Verse 39b) So many things take place that it is easy sometimes to fail to see some of the weight of the lesson. For example, the men in the boat are often chastised by us today for their lack of faith, and indeed Christ Himself rebuked them after rebuking the wind and sea. Have we considered lately their experience level? Many of the men in the boat were experienced and hardened fishermen. They were not novices. Yet, these men who had gained the mastery of life on the water were in great jeopardy to the point of thinking that their lives were about to end. (Verse 38) While Christ rebuked them as is within His purview, I grow less quick to point my finger at them as I consider how these masters of the sea were made to doubt. This was not their first storm to navigate, probably, but it “got to them.” It reminds me of those live feeds when meteorologists and storm chasers realize that the storm is bigger than they thought or doing something they did not predict. The look of horror that engulfs their faces is how I imagine the disciples were. “We’ve never seen anything like this…”

Yet, there is a simple thought contained in our study verse that is rich to consider. They had been fighting this storm for a certain period because the boat was now “full” because of the waves. Having been on a few vessels that had slow leaks, there is something unsettling about watching water rise in the boat. Enough water from the waves had filled the deck so that inundation or capsizing certainly seemed inevitable. Now, put yourself in their place. You have been in situations like this, but now you are where you have never been before. It is just one thing after another, piling up over and over. Now, if one more thing happens, it is all over. In our struggles with the pressures of life, have we ever said, “I’ve had it up to here, and I can’t take one more thing.”? The disciples looked over their vessel and said, “It can’t take another one.” When looking through the lens from that perspective, I generally share in mortal man’s plight in Scripture. While I would like to say that in the face of those trials I would stand tall, I fear that I would be dashing below deck to tell Christ, “We’re goners!”

While growing up, there was an expression tossed around our house that is a variant of the cliché “use your head.” My parents would tell us at times “use your good sense.” When making decisions and trying to reason through things, the command was to utilize the teachings that we had been given to make the right decision. To use good sense means that we see things for how they really are not how they appear to be. Perspective is both powerful, and sadly, at times, crippling. To the men on the boat, the storm is too big. Reality: someone bigger was still with them. To us today, life seems roughshod and at times, perhaps unbearable. Reality: Christ is still on the throne. Using good sense means that we do not let circumstances determine our values but rather constantly lean on the unchanging fullness of our Almighty Friend.

The interesting thing about this passage is that it begins with Christ’s simple declaration to them, “Let us pass over unto the other side.” (Verse 35b) His final statement in the lesson is, “Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have no faith?” (Verse 40b) The simple lesson is this: 1. I told you we are going, 2. How did you think we would not make it? Consider the richness of Christ’s promise to us that where He is there will we be also. (John 14:3b) Just as nothing would or could prevent the disciples making it to the other side, so nothing in this realm can or will keep us from being with Him in heaven. Had Christ desired it, He could have commanded that vessel to glide the rest of the way in the storm being full of water all the while. No matter what manifestation His power takes, He can overrule and overcome any problem that we face. Even if it seems that we are losing our mind with constant toils and struggles, there is more power with us than with anything we face.

Have you ever felt your boat to be full? Did it ever seem like you could not take one more thing or even part of one more thing? I freely confess that my life has had moments when I thought one more thing would crush me. Mortal man is prone to doubt and despair. Yet, before we lose our head about all that happens around us, let us remember that He who has all power loves us and watches over us. Nothing will plague us that is too much (i.e. more than we can bear) because of His lovingkindness to us. (I Corinthians 10:13) When it seems like we cannot take one more thing, let us recall to mind that we have one more thing with us that they do not: the Lord. He can mercifully take the monster in front of us away, as He did to the storm for His disciples. He can guide us through the storm in ways no man could have fathomed possible, or He can simply take us home to be with Him on the “other side.” No matter the deliverance used, He can deliver and has promised to deliver.

One of the more amusing things that I have encountered since being in the ministry is how so many people seem to subconsciously equate it with Old Testament prophets. They ask me to predict the future and foretell things that will be. My patented answer now is something to the effect, “My crystal ball is broken, and the last technician to fix them died.” So much of the future is murky that many things are impossible to tell. These days, the things that seem “likely” in the future are dark to consider. Yet, the thought that should drive the disciple daily is that no matter what comes of good or ill, Jesus is there! We may think Him uncaring at times like they did in this lesson, but friends, He always cares and will deliver His own. No matter how full life seems or how full the troubles make things, let us never become overwhelmed in mind and spirit to forget about our Powerful Friend.

In Hope,
Bro Philip

Philip Conley's Morning Thoughts

Morning Thoughts (II Peter 3:3-4 – “Creation: How Old?”)

Morning Thoughts,

“Creation: How Old?”

II Peter 3:3-4, “Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.”

This morning, foundation points that are building blocks to other principles are eroded or taken away. The family is attacked today by the constant onslaught of what marriage really is. Religion is hammered by constant attacks on the truth. The church is ostracized by culture as being out of touch and antiquated. Though these attacks may trouble the household of faith, the real affront in these onslaughts is towards God Himself. When the children of Israel wanted a king in the days of Samuel, the Lord told him that the rejection was not of Samuel’s judgeship but rather the Lord’s Kingship. Today, people’s attack on principles and institutions is not a rejection of God’s people as much as it is a rejection of God Himself. Perhaps the most fundamental truth is that of creation itself. Without the starting point that God is the creator of the material universe, failure is inevitable. However, many today claim to believe in God’s existence and role as Creator, but they deny the simplicity of truth as enumerated in the Scriptures.

As Peter wends home to the close of his second epistle, he will discuss in glorious terms the second coming of Christ. Before doing so, he will speak of things preceding that day that opens his discussion into the subject of the second coming. Before Christ comes back, scoffers will manifest themselves denying the coming of Christ. As proof of their denials, they will foolishly point to the predictable occurrence of things and say that all things have done this since the beginning. What is interesting is that these people are not necessarily evolutionists that deny the existence of God. They admit to a creation, but their idea of creation is faulty. Today, we see this mindset all around us.

In my secular life, I work in the engineering world and in the fields of science. The people that I most associate with professionally are learned in advanced mathematics and sciences. Though I am thankful that many of my colleagues are God-fearing men and women, it is disturbing to see how so many have fallen victim to the incessant barrage that has been unleashed in the science fields. Again, they do not subscribe to evolution in that there is no God. Rather, they take all the scientific data that we have available and try to somehow make it “jive” with the idea of Creator God. Since the data being given points to an “old earth,” they must find a way to make things fit with what science tells us is fact.

Without going too deep into technical weeds, the “old earth theory” is much more popular today than it was in centuries past. Due to testing in science fields, many materials seem to be millions or more years old. This conclusion is reached based on what we know of material decay through certain composite materials. Therefore, if something has decayed so much over the last 50-100 years, the conclusion is that it must be X million years old to decay to the point it is today. That very simplified explanation of what the data shows is why so many creation believing people subscribe to the old earth theory. Therefore, they take the Genesis 1 account to be allegorical wherein every day of the creation week is really just vast indeterminate periods of time. In this way, they “marry” creation through some long evolutionary cycle to claim that both the data conclusions and the Bible are both true.

Though I am not alone, people in my field that subscribe to a “young earth” (6000-7000 years old) have been ridiculed as blindly dumb. However, no matter what someone’s worldview is, assumptions must be made beforehand. The problem with the old earth worldview is that the assumption is plainly refuted by Scripture. The assumption from the data points is that there is a linear scale and that the decay of isotopes has followed a predictable pattern from the beginning. Peter asserts in our study verses that this mindset is exactly what the scoffers believe. He will go on in subsequent verses to talk of their willing ignorance to the worldwide flood and its ramifications. Because of what happened in Noah’s day, we cannot really comprehend the fullness of what life was like pre-flood. It was obviously different as men lived 900+ years. Certain species whose fossils have been unearthed lived then but not today. Such a cataclysmic change as the flood produced altered the scale of which things like decay took place. To say that the linear regression points to a creation that is millions or billions of years old is a scoffer’s mentality.

However, something much more sinister lurks behind this theory. Based on the fossil record and things that are yet being unearthed, we see something very evidently. Fossil grounds are a cemetery of sorts that displays death. If we accept the notion that the data points to an old earth and that Genesis 1 must be allegorical, then we must accept that these fossils lived and died centuries, millennia, or longer before Adam was formed upon the earth. If that be the case, then why did they die? The Bible unequivocally points out the fact that death exists and reigns in the earth due to man’s actions. (Romans 5:12) Death not only passed upon Adam and his posterity, but death affects natural life as well. Before the fall in the Garden of Eden, death was non-existent. Animals and anything else would not have died.

To say that life forms lived and died before and not subsequent to man’s decision is to deny the basic foundation point of why death is here in the first place. If that foundation stone is taken away, what about the inverse? James says in his epistle that sin “when it is finished” bringeth forth death. The inverse of that is that grace “when it is finished” bringeth forth life. If the starting place for death is moved from its rightful slot, then the starting point for grace gets altered as well. Without believing that God created all things exactly as He says He did, we end up with a myriad of unexpected problems in the building blocks of theology as it pertains to salvation and redemption.

Brethren, our adversary is very crafty and many of the arguments arising in my lifetime have caused a great many people to slip. One of my colleagues asked me one time, “With all the evidence that we have, how can you be so dumb as to deny it?” Though I do not deny the data, I do deny the assumptions that must be made to make the conclusions that people make with them. Our children need to know that the simple model of 6 days of creative work a few thousand years ago is the starting point. To move from that point leads us to slippery places wherein our belief of depravity, grace, sin, righteousness, life, and death will not be able to stand. Furthermore, it could ultimately lead to scoffing at the idea of His return. Beloved, His return is just as sure as His creation stands today. As real as the judgment of the flood in Noah’s day is, so real is the judgment of the fire in the Lord’s day. He is coming. The knowledge that His return will be swift, certain, and glorious sustains us today through hope. To keep that hope fresh and vibrant, let us look at the creation now that is kept in store to that day of judgment with the knowledge that it was framed by God’s word just as He said it was in the beginning. Over and over, “And God said…,” “And God said….,” “And God said….” All it took in the beginning was for God to say, and it was done. All it will take in the end is for God to say, and it is done. Even so come Lord Jesus!

In Hope,
Bro Philip