Category Archives: Christ

September 12, 2009 · 11:56 am

In Search of the Ultimate Hero

Much has been said lately about heroes.  And rightfully so.  The rescue workers rushing headlong into the burning towers to save the thousands trapped there come to mind. 

And then we think about our soldiers and marines who “gave the last full measure of devotion” on a faraway battlefield.   Yesterday I attended the memorial service of Pfc. Jonathan Yanney, who was killed in Afghanistan August 18, 2009, by a roadside bomb.  Jon gave up his life for a cause greater than himself and will always be remembered here in our little town as a hero.  And I will remember him, for I taught him in high school and enjoyed his presence, smile, and integrity.  He was my friend.

And so we all are looking for a hero–someone who would lay down their life for us.  That is what touches our hard and, at times, cynical hearts.  We are wired that way–to be touched when we realize that someone was so selfless as to put others before themselves–someone to face the peril of fires and the danger posed by those with dark designs. 

And so it was yesterday that my heart was touched, remembering the 20 year old soldier, who sat in my class just three years ago, and laughed at my antics as I coaxed him and his classmates into learning the lesson of the day. 

And as I sat there in the service, trying to dam up the warm salt water that fell from my eyes, I learned the lesson of the day.  I thought of Christ and realized that He is the ultimate hero.  For He showed us what love really is. 

He had said, “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (1).  And in order to express God’s nature, which is Love, He would have to “lay down his life” for His crowning creation, Mankind.  That would show them who and what God is. 

But God, the Immortal One, was just that–immortal, and could not die.  So in His infinite wisdom, He anointed a special human being that would house Him fully and would become the sacrificial Lamb of God and mankind’s anointed King of kings. 

This man was the Anointed One, the One appointed by the Father to do a very heroic act.  He would be referred to as Christ–Christos in the Greek, meaning the anointed one. 

Yes, Christ is our Hero.  He showed what love is by laying down His life willingly for us.  It is His selfless sacrifice for others that still touches man’s heart, that still shakes the flimsy foundations of our lives, that still speaks to us 2,000 years later. 

Christ is our Great Hero, for all the prophets testify about Him, that everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins through His name (2).  All because He loved us and laid down His life for His friends.     KWH

  1. John 15: 13
  2. Acts 10: 43

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January 28, 2009 · 1:40 pm

“Is Christ Divided?” Asked the Apostle Paul

Obviously  not.  And neither are the true members of His spiritual body, the church.  Yet, in Christendom divisions abound, as they did in Paul’s day.

“We are the true church,” say the Roman Catholics.  “No, we are,” say the Baptists.  “We are the Church of Christ!”  “No, we are following Luther.”  “We are following Wesley.”

Please.  2,600 different denominations, each with a different take on Christ.  Divisions abound.  And they all claim to be following the words of the Bible, yet they do not obey its words: “I beseech you…that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you…that you be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment” (I Corinthians 1: 10).

The same mind.  Whose mind?  The mind of Christ.  Since Christ is not divided, then those who really have His Spirit will not be divided either.  “If any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His” (Rom 8: 9).  If we are His, then we will have His Spirit.  And if we have His Spirit, we will have His mind, and we will not be divided.

Because of the divisions, Paul said that he would have to teach them the basics: the preaching of the cross.  This is what is lacking in Christians today.  They have not been taught that they must surrender their own egos to the death of the cross.  They must identify their sin with the dying Christ who took upon Him the sin of the world that day at Calvary.

“Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.  For he that is dead is freed from sin” (Rom 6: 6-7).   The old heart dies with Christ, and then He gives us a new heart by faith in His resurrection.  If we can believe that Christ was raised from the dead, can we not also believe that His Spirit is now raised up in us, thus freeing us from sin and sinning?

If all Christians had this experience of deliverance from sin and sinning, then the divisions would evaporate.  We would all join hands in grateful fellowship, sharing His Spirit among us.  For “there is one body, and one Spirit” (Eph. 4: 4).  That one body is Christ’s one body of believers, which have His Spirit.

And that Spirit only comes into us after we believe that our old self  has died on the cross, and then believe that He has been raised up again in us!  That will get rid of all the divisions.   Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{A note to fellow bloggers:  Check out this website in order to get more traffic to your blog:  http://condron.us  }

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April 27, 2008 · 12:48 pm

Unrequited Love–The Ultimate Heartbreak

     I have a confession to make.  I cried today.  Unrequited love–life’s great theme seen in our literature, arts, and song.  It gets you every time, this “loving someone and that love not returned in kind.”

     I was listening to Jose Luis Perales and Alejandro Fernandez sing Perales’s “Por que’ esta soledad” (Why This Loneliness?).  I was galloping with the country rock rhythm, at once soaring with the music and yet saddened by the lyrics.  A rough translation of some of the words:

     WHEN I SEE YOU LEAVE AT HIS SIDE/ Cuando te veo ir a su lado/

SMILING SO HAPPY, CARESSING HIM/ sonriendo tan feliz, acariciandolo,

HANGING SHAMELESSLY FROM HIS WAIST/ colgada sin pudor de su cintura…

AND ME, SO IN LOVE WITH YOU/ Y yo enamorado de ti

IN LOVE JUST LIKE THE FIRST DAY WHEN I DIDN’T KNOW THE MOST BITTER SIDE OF LOVE/ AND I ASK MYSELF, WHAT HAPPENED TO US?  ALL THE TENDERNESS I GAVE YOU/

WHY THIS LONELINESS?/  Por que’ esta soledad?

     And at that instant, I thought of the greatest of unrequited loves the world has ever known–God loving mankind, and it not returned in kind.  And that’s what took the catharsis to the next level where my eyes got wet, the tears fell, and the heart broke.

     These words came to mind.  He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not…He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not…(John 1-10-11; Isaiah 53:3). 

     I needed this type of catharsis.  It hurts when our halting overtures of love are not returned in kind.  If we will multiply that pain by one thousand, then perhaps we might get a glimpse into the heart of God, into the ultimate heartbreak.  And that is a good place for us to be.     Kenneth Wayne Hancock     

    

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February 3, 2008 · 7:50 pm

“Doubt Not in Your Heart”–Ripping Off the Shroud

     Belief is the distinguishing characteristic of the sons and daughters of God.  They will just flat out believe God and His word.  Period.  They will rip off the shroud of doubt that lays like a suffocating blanket of death over their own hearts, and they will shout, “No!  He’s alive!  In me!  He is risen in me!”  Because that’s what He says.  That’s what He wants us to believe.

   And then they will look around and see that that same shroud of doubt is smothering their brothers and sisters.  And they will realize that through His truth, God is now using them to peel back the doubt and cast it away.  They will simply believe God and His promises.

     When Christ says, “The Father is in Me,” they will believe it.  And in so doing, the promise of His infilling Spirit shall be kept.  “He that believes upon Me, as the scripture has said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water (this He spake of the Spirit)” (John 7:38).

     The princes and princesses of God will believe that their King divested Himself of all heavenly grandeur and actually walked around here in an earthly body just like theirs.  He died, was buried, and rose again for our justification, sanctification, and glorification.  And by faith–just believing having not yet seen–they will be beneficiaries of His promise. 

     And this promise is that the Holy Spirit, the invisible God, will come down and “abide” in them (John 14:15-17).  “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (14:23). 

     And by believing His words, the works that He did we shall do also–and greater works shall we do as His sons and daughters!  Why?  Because He said so.  How?  By His indwelling Spirit.  And that’s all we need.  He that believeth on on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do…(John 14:12).

     That’s our destiny.  To just get out of the way and let Him do His work through us–just let Him channel His light and love down and through us to the rest of His creation.  This is our destiny–if we believe.             Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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January 30, 2008 · 5:51 pm

Heirs of God–His Vision for Us

     “Where there is no vision, the people perish.”  So goes the wise proverb.  But it is not just any vision for our lives that ultimately rescues us.  It is the vision that our Creator has for us that will serve as the spiritual Rock and Foundation upon which to build our lives.

     His vision for us?  Nothing less than, as His offspring, to be His heirs and beacons of the Light that He is.  His purpose from all eternity is to fully pour Himself out into us His children–that we “might be filled with all the fulness of God” (Eph 3:19). 

     He sees us having His mind and thinking His thoughts.  We are mere vessels, clay vases and cups, fired through the trials of our stay on earth.  And He the Great Potter at the Wheel of Eternity, fires us, proves us, and eventually through much patience, fills us with Himself–until “Chist be all in all.” 

     But not that we should be a Dead Sea with no outflow.  No.  But so that He can pour Himself out of us.  And that water, His Spirit, will become springs of everlasting love, joy, and peace, poured out on the thirsty ground.  We are to let the “love from above flow down and through” us to others (See post “Love from Above–Down and Through”).

      That is God’s vision for us.  That is a special calling.  And now He waits for us to arouse ourselves out of slumber and arise from the dead–arise from the vanity of thoughts that do not share His vision for us. 

     We here in the USA are greatly blessed.  Our founding fathers carved out a place where we can be free to pursue these heavenly ideals.  We have come historically from a long line of Christians–from the first Pilgrims who landed in 1620 to “establish the kingdom of God on this earth” down through many rekindlings of His Spirit.  It is now our responsibility, as possibly the last generation to walk this earth before He comes back, to awake to His vision for us, knowing that we “are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood,” and that we should now “show forth the praises of him who hath called us out of darkness into his marvellous light (I Peter 2:9).          Kenneth Wayne Hancock

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January 28, 2008 · 6:30 pm

No Country for Old Men–Movie Review from a Christian Perspective

         A movie’s theme is the most important feature for me.  Now if you go for good acting, this movie has it.  Real life dialogue like you are there–it has it.  Stark reality with the characters caught in the clutches of naturalistic mayhem–it’s got it.  Cinematography depicting the barren, endless South Texas landscape and thus a symbol of the characters lives–impeccable.  You like suspense?  It literally moves your body around in your seat. 

     And I like all these aspects of the motion picture art.  But when the credits rolled, I found myself smothered by a cloud of hopelessness.  This picture could have been called No Hope for Any Man.

     For hopelessness is the theme and heart of this picture.  It shows how an average Joe played by Josh Brolin, a welder, gets sucked into the greedy world of drugs and money.  While hunting out in the wasteland for deer, He stumbles onto a drug deal gone bad.  Dead men, dead dogs, and dead pickup trucks lie strewn about on the desert floor, all riddled with bullets.  One truck is loaded with bricks of cocaine.  And then he finds another man with the suitcase full of bundles of hundreds–$2,000,000 to be exact.

     So he takes it and runs.  The drug syndicate bosses dispatch an absolute madman assassin after him, and you are left clutching the armrests of your chair as you begin to swim in the wake of the bloodletting that entails.

     Old Sheriff Bell, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is overwhelmed by the dozens of murders in his jurisdiction.  He has spent his life keeping the peace.  Over coffee, he and another old lawman lament this new day of violence that has overtaken them.  They call it “the evil tide” that’s washing over America.  And their faces say it all.  “It’s hopeless.  The evil is flooding over our society like a scourge.  Where is God in all this?”

     In his despair, Tommy Lee Jones says at one point, “I thought that when I got old, God would come into my life, but He hasn’t.”  Those of an older time in America remember a more innocent day.  Now it has become no country for these old men. 

     And so it went.  The crazy bounty hunter murders at will unabated, symbolizing how evil in this country grows and no one or nothing can stop it.  He walks away scott-free, no one around, at the end of the picture. 

     But I’ve got news for the Coen brothers who wrote and directed this film.  There is hope.  All signs point to our King Jesus Christ returning to this earth in our lifetime.  And he will come back and terminate the evildoers and he will staunch the evil tide of this world system.  He will establish a government of true righteousness, justice, and judgement. 

     He will dry the tears from every eye; He will exalt His followers who have crucified their selfish hearts and walked with Him in a newness of life; He will hold and comfort all who mourn.  He will heal the afflicted; He’ll give “beauty for ashes,” for the evil will lie in ashes, and His sons and daughters shall shine as they sing His words:  “In the world you shall have tribulation.  But be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”  And by believing that He dwells and abides in us, we overcome the world, also (John 16:33; I John 5:4)                                                Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{If you have a moment, please make a comment below if this review was helpful}

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January 26, 2008 · 6:04 pm

Sons of God, Daughters of God–His Princes and Princesses

     We who have been born from above have become the “children of God” or the sons and daughters of God.  For we “have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15).  And we know that our Father is the “King of glory.”  And we know that the sons and daughters of a king are princes and princesses. 

     We, then, as His children, are the princes and princesses of the Kingdom of God.  This is how God looks at us!  And so now we should look at each other with the love and respect given to an heir to the throne of the King.  In fact, this is our major responsibility as children of the King–to “let the love of God be shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit” that dwells within us.

     Look–the most practical way that God has of loving humankind on an everyday basis is through us, His princes and princesses.  If we are truly His children, then we will put away all of the selfish pettiness and start loving each other.  And if we have a tough day where the love is stopped up and can’t get flowing, we’ll call on Him and ask Him to melt our hearts and get that love from above flowing again.

     His princes and princesses will lead out by example.  They will exemplify their Father’s personality traits.  They will be faithful ambassadors of Him, showing the world the Love that God is.  They will stride forth matter-of-factly, shining forth as “lights in the midst of the selfish darkness. 

     And those that sit in darkness will look up from the mundane mire and see this light shining into their dark world of no-love.  They will see and hear and feel this light of love-from-above, and they at first will not comprehend it.  But as we keep shining, eventually they will awaken out of the night-slumber and will seek the light of love themselves.

     This is our calling.  He has chosen us for this.  It is His vision for our life here on this earth.  For really, we are his hands and feet; we are his arms and his legs; we are His body here on earth, and He is our head.  And we are beginning to know His mind, His will, and His wishes.  And we are in His mind, for He sees us as His princes and princesses!                                                           Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{If you have a moment, please make a comment below if this article was helpful}

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January 22, 2008 · 12:59 am

“God Is Love”–Agape Love from Above, Down and Through

     “Love from above–down and through” has turned into my motto or credo.  Some may wonder where I got it from. 

     Human beings have one major need: to be loved, especially someone who can give them sincere, pure “love from above.”  The love I’m talking about is agape love, or God’s love.  And so we humans are looking, looking incessantly for someone that can love us with the love from above.

     You take a group of people sitting around over there; they are a microcosm of the entire human race and its condition of “not being loved.”  And so we wait and wait–sometimes impatiently–for someone to love us.  Some wait their whole life for someone to really love them.  And I’m not talking about just romantic love here.  I’m talking about the loneliness and the longing solitude and the sadness it can entail.  I’m referring to the utter frustration of a friendless existence.

         But that is not how it works.  Someone in the circle must break out; they must break the cycle of self-centered-ness.  Someone must step out and stand up and not expect someone else to love them first!  Someone must start reaching out and loving others!   Someone must be that channel of love and appreciation that comes flowing down from above and comes on through them out to others.  Someone must believe and step out on the water and break the currently accepted law that “everyone should wait for someone to love them first before they give love to others.” 

     The old adage is true: “Give and it shall be given.”  In order to really be loved, we must love them first.  Give love to others, and love will be given to you.

     Why is that so universally difficult for humans to do?  Because the “love” we are talking about–the kind of love everyone is craving, is a spiritual thing that is not in a person’s natural state of existence.  Humans cannot love the way they want to be loved because their old nature is selfish.  And herein lies the frustration.  Mankind is subjected to this by their Creator in hopes that they will return to God for an operation (Romans 8:20).

     God is hoping that we will check ourselves into His spiritual hospital and get a heart transplant.  Humans in their original earthly state have an old selfish heart and mind.  It must be taken out and a new heart and a new spirit from must take its place. 

     The Great Physician has a stark operating table for this spiritual procedure.  And just like our hesitance to go “under the knife” in a physical surgery, so we are hesitant to submit to this spiritual procedure.  The operating table is the cross of Christ.  It is there that we die with Him, are buried with Him, and through belief in His resurrection, we receive a new heart and new spirit that keeps His laws. 

     This is how to get that “love from above” flowing on “down and through” us to others.  Every thing that blocks His love from flowing through us–every negative aspect like hatred, bitterness, revenge, fear, selfishness, greed, ungratefulness, desiring other people’s things–all these things must die out and be replaced with His Spirit.  In fact, in God’s eyes they already have died out.  “Knowing this that our old man is crucified with Christ” (Romans 6:6).  And God is raising up His sons and daughters, His princes and princesses, to be the channels of the “Love from above” for these last days–to be the channels of Himself, His very essence.   

Kenneth Wayne Hancock                                                                      

{If you have a moment, please make a comment below if this article was helpful}

                                               

 

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January 16, 2008 · 11:53 pm

The Road Through the Valley of the Shadow of Death

     Yes, we as God’s children, as His spiritual offspring, as His mortal heirs of all that He has, is, or ever shall be–yes, we are walking down a long road to get to his Celestial City.

     And it is a tough, lonely road at times, fraught with danger and temptation.  Our great poet/prophet/King David knew of the perils of this walk we are on.  “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…” (Psalm 23:4).  Here he places the very road we must travel directly through a valley, which is a low place where death’s shadow casts its silhouette on our every step.

     David wrote from experience, for King Saul hounded him and sought to kill him and persecuted him at every turn.  He knew that we humans were as “blades of grass,” fragile vapors strutting upon the earth, one heartbeat away from returning to dust, one fickle captain’s word from being so much cannon fodder.  For David was a “bloody man,” who saw the fruit of war lie in crimson pools in those valleys of death.  And he saw there “the dead burying the dead.”  

     And so it is with us.  We are beset by injustices and inequities in this life, and at times  we throw our hands up, and then…we should do what King David did.  In our darker hours of need, we should say to God, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.”  You are with us, and You “will never leave us nor forsake us.”                                  Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{If you have a moment, please make a comment below if this article was helpful}

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January 14, 2008 · 10:50 pm

Dreaming of Flying (Without the Airplane)

    

     Yesterday family, friends, and I are sitting just inside the dry sand on the beach of Waimea Bay.  Quicksilver camera crews are hooked up and ready to film.  It’s 6:00 a.m., an hour before sunrise.

     It’s the Eddie Big Wave Surfing Competition, and we feel the mist of the white froth kiss our cheeks, and as we talk, we begin to see the waves and their turbulence rushing towards us.  The waves are pounding the beach not 50 feet in front of us.

     My daughter Hannah and I are ironically, not speaking about water, ocean, waves, or anything remotely wet.  Somehow we get off into dreams-about-flying–where you are in the air, moving about without benefit of a flying-machine. 

     “You’ve had that dream?” she asks.

     “Yes, several times.  I have a recurring one where I’m lifting off silently and I’m gliding easy-like over a college campus.”

     “You, too, Dad?  I’ve had a dream sort of like that several times, but I never talk about it.  You know, people would think I’m a nut or something.”

     “You would be surprised at all the people with similar dreams.  I’ve talked to many people who have had a dream where they are lighter than air and fly around.  It’s pretty common.  What was your dream like?”  She’s becoming animated and her smile outshines the breaking light that now kisses the tops of the waves.

     “I don’t know exactly how to talk about it.  In the dream I raise up and have the sensation of staying just above my regular body.  It is an incredibly beautiful feeling–no worries, no cares.  I guess you’d call it levitating.”  She laughs a little girl joy-laugh, free for now to confide in me something very precious to her.

     “You’re not a kook,” I tell her.  And now I’m smiling with a transcendent child-grin, as having shared in a most delicious complicity.  “Hey, I turn around mid-air just by waving my hands like flippers.”

     She laughs.  “What do you think it means?” she asks.

     “I think that it’s a preview of what is to come.  God created us so that we would have these dreams.  They are not nightmares or evil, so they can’t be from the dark side.  And so I believe that He arranges for us to catch a whiff of how it would be to be immortal.  The apostle Paul wrote in I Corinthians 15 about how our earthly bodies will be changed to spiritual bodies that cannot die.  It sounds wild, but it’s there in black and white.  So I think that it is a preview of a coming attraction.”

     “Well, I know that it is real and true.”

     “I wrote a poem about it.  A heavenly being, a heavenly messenger, an angel, if you will, is speaking to us mortals about these dreams.  I used it as the Prologue to my first book.  Check it out when you get home.”

     Anyway, the conversation shifted to waves, or rather to the lack of proper big waves to hold the competition.  And so we all drifted back to our cars and went to get some breakfast. 

     Hannah will have looked up the poem by now, but I’m going to include it for you below, so you can have a chance to read it.  Pleasant dreams…

   The Message

And the heavenly messenger said,                 

Oh, there are eternal things

   that you have inklings about.

Little things that come in the night,

   while your head is on your pillow,

   while your eyes shimmer

   and dreams fly through your eyes, and you soar,

   and your spirit for a moment is freed

   from the earthy chains of flesh.

And you glimpse how it could be,

   that wonderful, immortal feeling of lightness,

   being that celestial that you are called to be.

You feel it at times, in your dreams and daydreams

   of how it would be to not be human,

   to not be restrained to the earth,

   to seep up as a warm vapor into the light air,

   lifting off and wheeling this way and that,

   and breathing a life that is the essence and fount of all life,

   breathing into eternal lungs that which breeds immortal thought.

Oh, you have had glimpses.

You have heard whispers from those

   who guard you in the night,

   from those who breathe into your ear

   the precious seeds of immortality.

But then you awake to the bands of a fleshly prison

   and soon hunger for things to stuff your face

   and things to place your instrument of

   eternal seed-bearing into.

You awake from your fine dream that we’ve given you

   and then return to grovel in the lie

   that you are only animal.             Kenneth Wayne Hancock

{You can read my two books at my website         yahwehisthesavior.com          or you can read about them at Amazon.com.  Just type my full name in quotes}

 

 

    

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