Dale Cresap's blog

Do you know the truth? Do you consider yourself to have a monopoly on it? For my word says that you know in part. You will encounter others who also know in part. They may know a different part than you do. This presents you with two opportunities. Your first impulse may be to set them straight in areas in which their understanding is deficient. Have you ever had people do this to you? Shouldn’t you be as eager or more so to learn from them the aspects of truth they know that you have not learned yet? If you seek to learn then you may find a more receptive audience for what you have to teach. Let every man be quick to hear and slow to speak. Humility and patience will open doors for you. 

Do you like to have a plan in mind and all the details worked out before you move ahead with a major decision? I called Abraham to get up and get moving toward a destination that I would show him later. I called my original disciples to follow me. Do you see the same principle in operation at the founding of these faiths? You are familiar with my promises and you find security in them but my call to follow me was given without a plan, agenda, schedule, or destination. Abraham committed to these terms and his belief was reckoned unto him as righteousness. This is a universal principle of faith, and a call to all who believe. Can you commit to follow me without knowing where I will lead you? 

Do you consider the Bible to be an absolute source of truth and divinely inspired? You are right. Do you think it is as important to have the Holy Spirit involved in your comprehension of it as was necessary to write it in the first place? Have you ever prayed; ‘open this book to me because I can’t get it on my own’? Spiritual things are spiritually discerned. The flesh cannot comprehend them. This is an attitude toward Bible study that requires a greater level of humility, but you also know that I delighted to conceal the mysteries of the Kingdom from the wise and prudent and reveal them unto babes. Open my word and call on me to open my word to you and I will. 

When you present my message do you use my word to do it? This has tremendous advantages if your audience will recognize the authority of scripture, so they know your message is not just on your own authority, but what if they do not? Does this leave you in an impossible situation? It shouldn’t, for you can declare my goodness from your own firsthand experience. You can start with the natural world, or with the deep human longing for transcendent meaning and purpose. You can start anywhere that you can establish common ground with another person. He who is wise wins souls, and a wise witness has more than one approach. Paul said he became all things to all people that he might by any means save some, and you are a living epistle of my gospel message. 

You have my promise that if you seek you will find. Does this sound too good to be true? Yet even this is not the complete picture, for before you seek you must desire. You must have your heart set on something before you can go after it. Have you ever desired things and sought them and obtained them only to be disappointed in them? And so along with my promise about seeking and finding I give you instruction to seek those things which are above and to seek first the Kingdom of God. Have you heard the advice to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it? I promise that you will get it so be careful to desire things that lead to and not away from eternal life. 

You have my promise that if you seek you will find. Does this sound too good to be true? Yet even this is not the complete picture, for before you seek you must desire. You must have your heart set on something before you can go after it. Have you ever desired things and sought them and obtained them only to be disappointed in them? And so along with my promise about seeking and finding I give you instruction to seek those things which are above and to seek first the Kingdom of God. Have you heard the advice to be careful what you wish for because you just might get it? I promise that you will get it so be careful to desire things that lead to and not away from eternal life. 

You want to hear my voice and you have my promise that you will hear and know it. How do you expect this to work? Do you expect it to come as orders from afar; instructions for the many choices you face every day? It is that and more besides. I am near rather than far so that you may hear my still small voice. You understand the need to obey me, but I speak to you more as a friend than a servant, for I am revealing myself to you as well as giving you instructions. I revealed my acts to the nation of Israel but I taught Moses my ways, and it is this greater level of revelation I want to give you. Since you are my son I want teach you my ways and instruct you in the wisdom that is from above, imparting my character to you that you may be transformed into my likeness. 

My word teaches you not to be overcome with evil, but to overcome evil with good. Does this seem impossible to you? Do you think of evil as powerful and goodness as weak and vulnerable? I would not ask this of you if it were not true. Have I not already walked this way and provided myself as an example for you? All of evil came against me and appeared to win but in the end and for eternity my goodness triumphed. This is a universal principle and I invite you to believe it and see it work in your own life. Have you not already seen that it was my goodness and not my wrath that led you to repentance? 

Do you consider yourself to be honest? This involves more than telling the truth to other people. You must tell the truth to yourself as well. In the things you think about, do you seize upon the first answer that confirms your preferences? This is intellectually lazy. It is more honest to consider all the evidence and let the question remain open until the evaluation is complete. If you think about spiritual things the same arguments apply. Is it spiritually lazy to be satisfied with easy answers? Spiritual honesty may require you to leave some questions open while you consider them. Even some of the concepts in my word are held in tension. Does this make you uncomfortable? Yet I have called you to be a seeker and a sojourner. As you follow me I will reveal the mysteries of my Kingdom to you and lead you into all truth. 

I said suffer the little children and forbid them not to come unto me for of such is the Kingdom of God. Do you want a clearer vision of divine presence in your life? I already taught you that you minister to me by ministering to the least of these. Do you think this refers only to the poor? I tell you that it applies to children also. They are small in stature and lacking power and influence and wealth. This makes them ideally suitable vessels for me to manifest myself in, for they are still fresh from heaven. Do you structure your life to avoid contact with them? This would impoverish you for I have much to teach you through them. Don’t forget that you must become as a child to enter my Kingdom.