I am naturally a visionary person. It’s part of my personality and temperament to see the possibilities rather than simply accept the normal existence of things. As one Myers-Briggs Profile says of me, “I live in the world of possibilities, and can become very passionate and excited about things. My enthusiasm lends me the ability to inspire and motivate others. I love life, seeing it as a special gift, and strive to make the most out of it.”

My enthusiasm has not always been met with welcoming responses. In fact, I have been called naïve by some people in the church who fear change. One leader said to me, “If you don’t like things the way they are, then why don’t you just leave?”

Hanz Finzel, the author of the book, The 10 Mistakes Leaders Make, wrote about this in the fourth chapter of this book, which is titled “No Room for Mavericks? They Bring Us the Future.”

In that chapter on page 67, Finzel says, “When we become too preoccupied with policy, procedure, and the fine-tuning of conformity to organizational standards, in effect, we squeeze out some of our most gifted people. Organizations have this nasty habit of becoming institutions. And institutions have this great tendency to fade into irrelevance. Movements become monuments. Inspiration becomes institution…This is as true in the church as it is in the business world.”

But just because I easily accept change, does not mean that I am anymore comfortable with change than anyone else. Change is painful. Change requires work, sacrifice, and compromise. Nobody really likes change. As John Maxwell says, “Leaders don’t like change anymore than followers, unless it’s their idea.”

Most of us resist change. We don’t like moving or having to find a new job. If we could, most of us would build a castle of comfort, where everything we like, do, and eat, and all the people that we love would be readily available. That castle of comfort would be impervious to the world, and we would do everything that we could to protect our daily habits of living. We would never have to try anything new to eat, to do, or even to watch on television.

The story in Genesis 11:1-9 is a story about people who don’t want to change. The Tower of Babel represented a place to settle.

In Genesis 1:28, God commanded people to multiply and spread out upon the earth. God gave his created masterpiece the ability to creative to explore, to develop, to grow, to renew, and to go as far as their gifts, talents, and abilities would take them.

But just like many of us, these people in Shinar were plotting and planning a way to stay put.

In the passage of Scripture that we are discussing, we read “the whole world spoke the same language.” Our initial understanding of this passage is to assume that the word “language” is a reference to the literal spoken language of the people, as if they all spoke Akkadian, Hebrew or some other Ancient language. However, the phrase, “spoke the same language,” could also mean that they all communicated the same ideas and plans.

In verse seven, God counters their united, human attempt by saying, “Come, let us go down and confuse their language so that they will not understand each other.” The text expresses the true frailty of man against the reality of God’s universal strength. Human beings desired to unite against God and the hosts of heaven. And now the language of the Bible expresses just how small are the greatest plans of man by saying in verse five, “The Lord came down,” as if to say, it was so small and so far away from ever reaching God’s dwelling place that God had to travel to see it.

Steven Covey says in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, “Within the freedom to choose are those endowments that make us uniquely human. In addition to self-awareness, we have imagination—the ability to create in our minds beyond our present reality.”

It’s okay to explore and invent. We are encouraged to discover our world and go as far as we can travel in order to bless it with the skills and abilities that God has given to each of us.

This year can be a year of new life, new ideas, new accomplishments and discoveries. This year can be a year of new commitments and higher standards. This New Year can be the opportunity for you to begin to explore the amazing person that God has created you to be.

You can stop building your monument, your castle of comfort, and begin to discover the world of ideas and plans that God has for each and every one of us.

Happy New Year!

In His dust,
Johnny

© 2008 Jonathan P. Gainey and Flock’s Diner.
All Rights Reserved

Reading the Scriptures as the Word of God without recognizing the historical and cultural nuances that are recorded in the texts can allow readers to miss wonderful truths.

In the birth narrative of Jesus, Luke records, “And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night” (2:8).

Before the fall harvest season, shepherds begin moving their flocks into the fields to wait for the end of the harvest season. After every family has harvested their garden and have left their corners and whatever has fallen (Leviticus 19:9-10) for the poor, the shepherds are then to lead their flocks into the gardens to clean up whatever has been left by the poor. Over a month’s time, the sheep and goats will completely clean the gardens and leave their droppings to fertilize them for the next harvest season.

The Shepherds arrive just before the fall harvest season, which begins at the end of September/beginning of October, and ends before the next rainy season which begins at the beginning of November. During this entire season, the shepherds live in the fields with their flocks. The fields are a very specific area of land that runs between the ganim (Hebrew for “gardens”) and the green pastures, which are actually the very dry hills that are scattered with small patches of vegetation.

With the knowledge that the shepherds “live in the fields” every year just before the fall harvest season and are to be gone by the beginning of the rainy season (early November), we can very confidently suggest that Jesus was born in the month of October, while “there were shepherds living out in the fields.”

This is not any real news to many. However, the historical setting of Luke’s words give us a better understanding for why shepherds were living in the fields during the birth of Jesus, and clarify the actual timing of Christmas.

The date of December 25 was the birthday of Mithra, the sun god, also known as Sol Invicto, (Invincible Sun). Mithraism was celebrated every year on December 25th and was known as “the Day of the Lord.” Jesus, “the Sun of Righteousness,” was honored by Constantine after he became ruler of the Roman Empire, and following the Edict of Milan, as he named December 25th the birthday of Jesus.

Be blessed and be a blessing,
Johnny

© 2008 Jonathan P. Gainey and Flock’s Diner.
All Rights Reserved

In a town where I have lived, there was once a restaurant that was closed by its owner. That’s no big deal, except for the fact that it was at a time when certain people could not eat in that restaurant because of their skin tone. The owner closed the restaurant rather than be forced to serve all customers. That happened many decades ago. But, sadly, the sin of hatred still lingers in many towns and cities all over the world.

When I moved to Germany in 1990, the wall which separated East Germany from West Germany had recently been knocked down. What an amazing time that was. But soon after the liberation of the East Germans, I heard West Germans calling them, in German, “East-landers.” The particular German whom I was speaking with explained that this was a derogatory term, which was used for those East Germans who were getting too many benefits from the West German government.

Maybe we are descended from apes. Our attitudes toward one another are not completely unlike the chimps that rip the limbs from foreign chimps who stroll into their territory.

Jesus was a Jew who was born into a “favored” people. I’m sure that this favored status brought plenty of envy and rage from other peoples of the earth. However, it wasn’t God’s plan to keep His precious Israel separate. Instead, they were to live in such a way as to show the rest of the world the beauty of living in the Kingdom of God. But, just like most other separated people, they became selfish with their blessings and decided to develop ways to keep others out rather than bring them in.

Jesus’ message was for all people to come together and be one as he and the Father are one. Even other ancient Jews taught of how God loathed hate and racism.

“How God abominates hatred is illustrated by the observation, ‘Since the builders of the Tower of Babble loved one another, the Holy One, blessed be He, was not willing to destroy them from the world but scattered them in all directions; with the men of Sodom, however, since they hated one another, the Holy One, blessed be He, blotted them out from this world and the World to come’” (Abraham Cohen, Everyman’s Talmud, page 99).

Will the Church ever come together? Will we ever be one as Jesus and the Father are one? As long as we continue to find reasons to hate one another, especially those who claim to follow Christ, we will continue to be blotted out from this world and the World to come.

In His dust,
Johnny

© 2008 Jonathan P. Gainey and Flock’s Diner.
All Rights Reserved

The Parable of the Hidden Treasure and the Pearl in Matthew 13:44-46 has a deep and rich background in the Hebrew world, which has always been a reference to the teaching of God’s Word. Learning the Word of God was more valuable than anything that had ever existed; it was a hidden treasure that was meant to be excavated by every child of God, and nothing was more valuable.

Jesus’ message was The Message of the Kingdom. He taught of the priceless Way and Will of God. And the people who found the Kingdom, who found the Way of God, had indeed discovered a priceless treasure.

The church fathers, like Origen and Irenaeus taught that the pearl was Christ and that those who found Jesus had found the great Jewel. But in the context of Jesus’ teaching, it was the opportunity to enter the Kingdom of Heaven and learn to live the will of God that was the value of his invitation.

In Jewish tradition, the greatest treasure was the Torah, and people would give up land, flocks, crops, and gold to have the opportunity for deep study in the Torah of God.

“An ancient sage named Jose, the son of Kisma, said, I was once walking by the way when a man met me and greeted me, and I returned his greeting. He said to me, Rabbi, from what place are you? I said to him, I come from a great city of sages and scribes. He said to me, If you are willing to dwell with us in our place, I will give you a thousand golden dinars and precious stones and pearls. I said to him, even if you were to give me all the silver and gold and precious stones and pearls in the world, I would not dwell anywhere but in a home of the Torah.” –Brad H. Young, Parables, 210

The hidden treasure and the pearl both signify the Kingdom of God, which is the Word of God being learned and lived by the people of God. Jesus calls us to search for the treasures of the Kingdom, the Will and Ways of God and His people, and even to give up everything to know and live according to His priceless Word.

Jim Rohn said when we invite people to come and dig for the treasures of higher learning, many will say, “I don’t have a shovel.” He will then say, “Get you one” with their reply being, “Do you know what a shovel costs today?”

Jesus calls us to pay the price, no matter how expensive the shovel, in order that we may find the Pearl of Great Price that is His eternal Word.

In His dust,
Johnny

© 2008 Jonathan P. Gainey and Flock’s Diner.
All Rights Reserved

Hello everyone,

I want to let you know that I haven’t been able to upload any messages for the last couple of weeks, because my computer was very ill. My computer has been repaired, but the repairs caused me to lose the programs that I use to upload my weekly messages.

I should have everything rolling again by the end of this week.

Thanks for listening. I hope you are blessed by my studies and teaching.

In His dust,

Johnny

In Matthew 18:23-25 we read of The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant.

It’s not easy to have a clear understanding of many of the words of Jesus without a better understanding of the context, time, and place in which Jesus is teaching.

This story is a reminder that when you’re feeling sorry for yourself and you’re thinking that nobody cares about you, try missing a couple of payments.

The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant is a message about divine forgiveness exemplified in human relationships. God does not provide mercy to the unforgiving.

The amount of money that is portrayed by Jesus in this story is so ridiculously large that it had to have been heard as funny. I’m sure his listeners were thinking to themselves, “That is just silly that someone would owe that much money” which is how Jesus got their undivided attention to hear how this would all pan out.

Ten thousand talents was roughly equivalent to the national debt. No average worker could ever even dream of paying back that much money. A talent was equivalent to 6,000 denarii. To help you understand how much that is, Judea, Idumaea, and Samaria together would pay 600 talents per year, while the servant, an average working man in this story, all by himself owed 10,000 talents. If this working man could work every day of his life and save every single dollar, meaning he had no bills and didn’t even use money to eat, it would take him over 150 years to pay this back.

The enslavement or imprisonment of a person, and in many situations the enslavement of family members, for paying off debt is a reality for Jesus’ listeners as well. In fact, Jesus refers to this when he says, “Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly I say to you, you will never get out till you pay the last penny” (Matt 5:25-26; Luke 12:58). In 2 Kgs 4:1 a widow cries to Elisha, “Your servant my husband is dead; and you know that your servant feared the LORD, but the creditor has come to take my two children to be his slaves.”

The listeners of this story are amazed when Jesus says that the king forgives the debt and lets the man go free.

Then the twist comes when this same man who had an enormous debt forgiven by the king goes to a man who owes him what would be considered three months wages and he does not forgive the debt. The man who was forgiven then faces the judgment of being unmerciful.

I believe that we, as children of God, are to gorge one another with forgiveness; without it, we whither and die.
The ultimate goal of Jesus’ story is to remind his hearers of God’s compassion and willingness to forgive, as well as His unwillingness to ignore justice.

Only the merciful are shown mercy.

In His dust,
Johnny

© 2008 Jonathan P. Gainey and Flock’s Diner.
All Rights Reserved