The Lord sets the gold standard for power of all sorts.

Destructive power. It seems uncontentious to say that Hollywood, and the media industry in general, does not like Christianity or anything to do with God. Freewill and all that. Of course, they are welcome to dislike whatever they wish. That being said, they do seem to spend a good amount of their time referencing it in various ways. The ten plagues that God brought upon Egypt when he was freeing his chosen people, the Hebrews, are often referenced by the media. Whether by making movies about the event or using it as a reference to describe the enormity of some disaster, they treat it as the gold standard upon which any devastation is to be judged. Weather commentators use terms like "Biblical proportions" when describing things like hurricane damage and movie producers seem to enjoy making and remaking movies about the ten plagues so that they can incorporate the maximum amount of special effects.

Constructive power. While the world seems to like concentrating on the destructive power of God, he also sets the gold standard for creative power, specifically the creation of the universe and everything in it, including us. Gotta admit that speaking the universe into existence is impressive. I love the creation account and when you read it carefully, it always strikes me as the most briefly and humbly described use of power by the Lord. There was no intent to impress, just a willingness to provide a wonderful universe for the new life he was about to create.

"Pastor, I just feel that I'm not being fed." This is always a fun thing to be told by a member of your congregation. All that studying and sermon preparation wasted. The first time I had someone tell me this, I was distraught and blamed myself until I realised, looking back, that the issue was that I wasn't preaching what they wanted me to preach. Not going to name any names, but one family were preppers and were offended that I wasn't using the pulpit to warn the congregation that martial law was going to be declared imminently, and certainly in less than two years and that everyone should start preparing by stockpiling food and ammunition. They even had YouTube videos of other people saying the same things, so how could I not believe them? I was such a bad person, how could they in good conscience stay under my ministry any longer?

Well, that was about ten years ago as I write this, so we are overdue for martial law and the government taking away our rights using extreme force by at least eight years. While I am aware that these days the average lifespan of a conspiracy theory is somewhere in the region of six months before it's proven true, not every conspiracy theory is automatically true.

What is true, is that no matter who is or isn't the president of the United States (or is or isn't the leader of any other country) the Lord is still on his throne and in charge of the universe. The Lord's will and his plans are unable to be thwarted by any enemy. Satan may steal away individuals from the Kingdom of God, but the Church is going to be triumphant and every plan and minion of the devil is going to be defeated. Therefore, we are better served receiving the teaching of the scriptures regardless of whether we like them rather than listening to teachers of conspiracy theories. If your pastor is preaching straight out of the scriptures, clearly teaching that Jesus is good and sin is bad, then your obligation is to receive that spiritual food and not put yourself on a spiritual hunger strike.

While I'm in the mode of sharing observations from my time as a pastor, here's another one. On a number of occasions, I had members of the congregation let me know that they were going to move far away from the area. When it was for a genuine life reason, one example was a young man joining the US Air Force, we wished them well and sent them off with our blessings. Every so often, though it was obvious to everyone except them, that they were running away from a problem, rather than trying to resolve it. This never went well and the outcome was always that everything got worse for them.

Thinking that just moving to somewhere new will get you away from your troubles with no other effort on your part has never been, is not and will never be a good idea. The simple reason why is that the issue is nearly always the person and not the geography. Your issues, especially addictions and behavioral issues don't care where you live. If you think moving away from the supply of your issues is going to cause them to leave you alone, you are in for a surprise. While there are many good people and things in the world, it is has been afflicted with sin ever since the original sin of Adam and Eve. That sin will find you and ensure that a lifetime supply of your particular issues and weaknesses will be made available to you wherever you go.

I'm not against moving, especially given that I emigrated from England to America. But remember that issues are issues and geography is geography. If you need to change your location for life reasons, then go for it and enjoy the experience. If you are facing issues, the absolutely best time to deal with them is now and the best place is where you already are. The reason is that delay will only allow the issues to become worse and the place where you are almost certainly has more friends and family available to help you through your challenges. Moving away from people who love you and are willing to help, just so that you can procrastinate on dealing with your issues is a near certain bad experience waiting to happen.

As a pastor, you are afforded a front row seat into the lives of your congregation. Normally this is wonderful as you get to see their growth and share in their positive life events. Unfortunately, you also get to see the negatives and this is where you discover whether they are going to be, spiritually, a fight or flight person.

Most people react spiritually in one of two ways to challenging life circumstances, they either pull closer to the Lord or they move further away. There is no middle ground in this reaction. I have never seen anyone be neutral in their perspective towards God under difficult conditions. As a pastor it is important to work with your congregation members to guide them towards the option of drawing closer to God. The reason for this is that experience has shown me that there are seriously different likely outcomes from the two options.

Those who hold on tight to the Lord have a strong track record of emerging from their personal dark time much stronger in their relationship with God and with their friends and family. If you've read Psalm 23, this really shouldn't surprise you. Whatever form your dark valley takes while you are walking through it, you have the personal promise of the Lord that he will be walking alongside you the entire way.

A few years ago my wife and I wrote a bible study called Questions (available on Amazon.com, rush out and buy copies for all of your friends, they'll love it) and this morning while sitting in my favorite coffee shop I was thinking that it would be a good follow up to look at some of the answers we find in the scriptures, concentrating on the answers of Jesus as these are definitive, being the answers of the Lord himself.

The first of Jesus' definitive answers that I'd like to look at is found in Mark 12:28-31. A similar exchange is also found in Matthew 22:34-40, but it's hard to say with 100% certainty that it's the same encounter as Mark describes the questioner as a scribe, while Matthew describes them as a Pharisee. Matthew also does not include the proceeding verse (Deuteronomy 6:4) whereas Mark does (Deuteronomy 6:4-5). The fact that it seems like Matthew omitted arguably the most important verse of Old Testament scripture seems very strange and is an argument for their having described two different exchanges. Deuteronomy 6:4 deserves it's own essay, but it's important enough that it has its own name, being referred to as the Shema (pronounced Sha-mah), named after the first word of that verse of scripture. Either way the answer is based upon the same passage of the Mosaic Law, so I'm going to go with Mark's version because I think that it makes more sense when you include the Shema.

Before we get to the answer I want to observe that the question itself is also interesting. Jesus was asked many questions during his time of earthly ministry and many of them were intended as tricks to get him to say something that could be used against him. Trick questions though generally brought a question as their response, but here we see in Mark 12:34 that Jesus was impressed with the sincerity of his question and the tenderness of his heart towards the Lord.