Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
LIFE Bite is a short-format Christian video podcast where Chet Lowe and guests dive into real-life issues with biblical truthβone bite at a time.
Each episode delivers practical wisdom, spiritual insight, and honest conversations to help you grow in faith and live with purpose.
It was this year that I was able
to walk into my mom's house after having
the home for over 30 years.
She sold it and moved out to California
to be with us.
And my dad always used to put every
year's worth of income tax or special documents.
He had a great filing system.
He would throw it into a black garbage
bag and then throw the black garbage bag
up into the ceiling.
So as we were going through, my mom
would just like, hey, throw everything away.
But I decided to go through everything and
discovered as I was looking at our immigration
papers.
Now, some of you don't know that I
am an immigrant from the Bahamas.
And I was looking at our immigration papers
and I noticed that we were asked to
leave the country.
We're being forced to leave.
And we stayed in the United States illegally
until we were able to secure a green
card.
Now, I didn't never knew this.
When I asked my mom about it, her
response was your father paid his taxes.
I'm letting you know a little story about
my own life's journey as an immigrant from
the Bahamas because of the current situation that
we find ourselves here in L.A. County.
There's a lot of people that are up
in arms.
And this is not necessarily something that I
want to delve into any kind of political
structure, whether you're Republican, whether you're a Democrat
or whether you're independent, because there is a
biblical response that we must adhere to in
order for us to minister as Christ's ambassadors.
And there's three things that I want to
talk about today.
The first is Christian character.
A lot of times when we get emotional
and when there is an issue that is
very sensitive to us, as this one is,
sometimes we can lose Christian character.
But Jesus did not give us a pardon,
nor did He give an excuse that we
can have for us to lose it.
Some will say, well, Jesus, He lost it
in the temple.
Well, we have a theological term for that.
It's called righteous indignation.
You see, Jesus can do something that no
human being can do.
He can read the heart.
He can perceive.
He knows what's going on.
Now, human beings, we can discern the heart
by what people say, because out of the
abundance of mouth speak the heart.
But we don't know the reality, like Jesus
does, of what was going on in people's
hearts.
He was righteous in what He did because
He knew exactly what was going on.
But for the human being, we've been called
to Christian character, and we find that Christian
character in Matthew 5.
In fact, even if we're slapped on one
cheek, we're told to turn the other cheek
because of this particular character.
That character, poor in spirit.
We're to be humble, humble at all times.
We're to mourn with those who mourn.
That is the heartbeat of a Christian.
We're to be meek, and that means power
under control.
And we're going to talk about that in
just a little bit.
We're to hunger and thirst for righteousness.
In other words, with every issue and every
situation in life, we should be discovering in
the Word of God how we're to handle
that situation.
Not how we feel about it, not our
politics, but how Jesus directs us.
That's a hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Then He says, blessed are the merciful.
Now, that's a quality that every single one
of us should have.
And it's not mercy to who we pick
and choose.
So whether we have mercy for ice or
we have mercy for the immigrant, we're to
have mercy for all people because God did
not pick and choose His mercy.
He had mercy on you, and He had
mercy on the thief on the cross.
Then there's the pure in heart.
This is the desire of the Christian to
be pure in heart, not to have any
kind of motive, not to have any kind
of heartbeat except for that of the Spirit
of Christ that is guiding inside of each
one of us.
Blessed are the peacemakers.
We can't throw that out, that Christian character
out, simply because we're upset or we're frustrated
about a given situation.
And then the Bible goes on to say
our Christian character, we're going to be persecuted
for righteousness.
And the reason being is because the enemy
can't stand when we stand up for our
Christian character.
Now, I'm going to go on to the
second one, Christian conduct.
Listen to what Paul wrote the church, that
we're to conduct ourselves in a manner worthy
of the gospel.
Once again, listen, we're to conduct ourselves in
a manner worthy of the gospel.
There is something that I majorly disagreed with
many years ago when I was serving as
a missionary in Liberia, West Africa.
There were children being used as soldiers, children
being used as young as five.
I have a four-year-old that we
were able to rescue, four, five, six, seven,
eight years old, children killing children.
I was enraged about it.
I was so angry about it that I
did something about it.
I started rescuing child soldiers and bringing them
into my home.
That's a conduct, I believe, that's worthy of
the gospel.
So many people are willing to hold up
signs, even against abortion, and they're willing to
go and do an event against an abortion.
But if you ask that same person that's
holding up that sign, are you willing to
adopt, take that woman into your home and
then pay for all the medical bills and
then adopt that child?
Oh, that's a whole different story.
You see, Christian conduct walks worthy of the
gospel.
And I need to help us all understand
what that means, that sacrifice, that we're willing
to sacrifice, that we're willing to love unconditionally,
all people, not just people that we pick
and choose.
And then 1 John 3 describes it.
It's a laying down of our lives.
Now, I don't have anything against anyone putting
up any kind of sign in protest.
That's not what I'm saying.
What I am saying is that we need
to be as Christians, we need to have
a Christian conduct.
And that's one that's worthy of the gospel,
one that's willing to lay down our lives,
to go the second mile, to do something
above and beyond what the world would expect
in order to make a difference in culture.
And so, Andre and I, in the course
of this Liberian civil crisis, we actually went
against the existing government because they were warlords
that were, they were warlords that were leading
children into fighting.
And we rescued 1,500 child soldiers, and
we brought them into our home, and we
began to raise them and then foster them
into other Christian homes.
That, I believe, is sacrifice.
It's not just simply holding up a sign.
It's choosing to make a difference in someone's
life for their eternity.
Sometimes we're so concerned about the politics of
the border.
But are we concerned about the politics of
the border between heaven and hell?
What do we speak most about?
Are we willing to speak about our politics,
or are we willing to lead someone to
Jesus Christ with the same words?
What do we talk more about?
It's a question that we all need to
ask ourselves, because I believe what the church
should be doing is going amongst those that
are in that riots and offering the peace
of the gospel to everyone that's there.
Now, does it mean what's happening is right?
That's not what I'm saying.
But what I'm choosing to communicate is that
we don't have the right as believers just
to throw away our Christian conduct because we're
upset about an issue.
And then, finally, let me talk about Christian
contention.
There's two verses that I want to bring
up, and they seem like they might, well,
be oppositional to each other, but not really.
First is Romans 13, verse 1, Let everyone
be subject to the governing authorities, for there
is no authority except which God has established.
We've got to remember that God established Cyrus.
He established Nebuchadnezzar.
These were wicked guys that God chose to
use for His glory.
Would I have picked these guys?
Absolutely not.
But I'm also not the all-knowing God.
God establishes authority.
But listen to this verse.
The Bible then goes on to say in
Acts 5, verse 29, We must obey God
rather than human beings.
Well, let me tell you something.
I don't believe there's anyone that has decided
how to solve the difference of these two
verses other than Martin Luther King, Jr. I
want to give you a quote that he
said in the process of the Civil Rights
Movement.
He said this, Darkness cannot drive out darkness.
Only light can do that.
Hate cannot drive out hate.
Only love can do that.
Recently at our church, we had a gentleman
by the name of Ivan Mawariri, and he
was in Zimbabwe during a very corrupt government.
And while there, he decided to oppose the
government.
And let me tell you how he did
it.
He did it through prayer.
And by prayer, we were able to see
that government come down because God took over.
There's nothing more powerful than the power of
prayer.
I'll never forget.
It is an indelible imprint in my mind
when the state of Florida was deciding over
whether or not the abortion was going to
be illegal.
There was all kinds of hatred in front
of the Florida Supreme Court.
You should have seen it, and I would
encourage you to pull it up on YouTube.
And there in front of the Supreme Court,
there was all kinds of hatred.
But Christians yelling at non-Christians, and non
-Christians yelling at Christians, and pastors shouting and
screaming against abortion.
Well, it's easy to show up for that
event.
But if you had to take a look,
and maybe you'll see them or maybe you
won't, if you took a look beyond that
image of all that rioting that was going
out in front of the Supreme Court, there
were two women.
And two women were on the steps of
the Florida Supreme Court, and there they were
in prayer.
You see, the most powerful people that were
there that day were those two women that
made the decision, we're going to choose to
go to God because we can't solve this
problem.
Politics can't solve this problem.
A legislature cannot solve this problem.
A president cannot solve this problem.
But God can solve this problem.
And if we go to God in prayer,
there is so much power in prayer.
Please don't ever say to someone, the least
I will do is pray for you.
The most you can do is pray for
someone.
And then when God presents in front of
you a need, remember Scripture.
And remember how God would lead you to
minister to someone in need.
You don't turn someone away, whether they're legal
or illegal.
You choose to minister the way that the
Word of God tells you to minister, and
you choose to be led by the Holy
Spirit of God.
And the best way that you can know
is you commune with God, you have a
communication with God, and that is going to
be through prayer.
Seek God in prayer and go to God
in prayer for this, for what's going on
in LA.
And let's ask God to intervene and watch
how He will part our Red Sea, and
God will be glorified in this.
Let's go to God in prayer.
Until next time.