WesleyGospel Ministries

THIS IS REALLY GREAT.
–J.B.–

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.
–1 Thessalonians 4:11-12 (NIV)–

Better a little with the fear of the Lord
    than great wealth with turmoil.
–Proverbs 15:16 (NIV)–

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In this podcast I have a tendency to idealize farm life, but the reality is, having a farming business is not the best idea for everybody. It is a very, very dangerous line of business to be involved in. The following hazards present themselves not just for dad, but for every single family member: tractor and machinery injuries and deaths; falling into a grain bin like quicksand and suffocating to death; getting trampled or gored to death by livestock; cancer, nerve damage, and birth defects from exposure to industrial strength pesticides; heat stroke from long hours out in the sun; fatigue from working your body too much; lightning strikes and tornadoes out in the wide open fields; and falling off of roofs, silos, and lofts.

I think the safest and most ideal scenario should be to aim for something akin to farm property–without running an actual farming business–and which lacks all the dangerous farm equipment and buildings. Lots of property, acres, and a farm house like setup, but the husband and the wife each have their own remote work-from-home businesses online (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10). But the property should not be too off the grid, not too far out in the rural–perhaps around 5-10 minutes away from a hospital, police department, and fire department. This seems to offer the family maximum independence and privacy combined with maximum safety and emergency response. Both Little House on the Prairie and Field of Dreams tap into this vision of what has been called the “old American dream,” where the family’s connection to the natural creation is both a livelihood and a spiritual grounding; success and ambition are tied not just to effort or financial achievement, but to a moral or spiritual commitment that reflects the “Protestant work ethic,” or the economic virtues of diligence, thrift, and the Golden Rule; strong family and community ties as the framework for personal and social fulfillment; life’s meaning is clearer and moral effort is rewarded; self-reliance, faith, family, and the land are the central themes. –J.B.

Richard Weiss, The American Myth of Success (The University of Illinois Press, 1988).

Irvin Wyllie, The Self-Made Man in America (The Free Press, 1954), pp. 151-174.

Richard Steele, The Religious Tradesman (Sprinkle Publications, 1989).

I’VE JUST GOT TO


LOVE JESSE’S


PREACHING.


–J.B.–

His sons were seducing the young women
who assisted at the entrance of the Tabernacle.
–1 Samuel 2:22 (NLT)–

Visions were quite uncommon.
–1 Samuel 3:1 (NLT)–

She named the child Ichabod…
she said, “The glory has departed from Israel.”
–1 Samuel 4:21-22 (NLT)

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They debauched the women that came to worship at the door of the tabernacle, 1 Samuel 2:22. They had wives of their own, but were like fed horses, Jeremiah 5:8. To have gone to the harlots’ houses, the common prostitutes, would have been abominable wickedness, but to use the interest which as priests they had in those women that had devout dispositions and were religiously inclined, and to bring them to commit their wickedness, was such horrid impiety as one can scarcely think it possible that men who called themselves priests should ever be guilty of. Be astonished, O heavens! at this, and tremble, O earth! No words can sufficiently express the villainy of such practices as these.

—MATTHEW HENRY’S COMMENTARY ON 1 SAMUEL 2:22–

To me it is especially appalling that a man should perish through wilfully rejecting the divine salvation. A drowning man throwing away the lifebelt, a poisoned man pouring the antidote upon the floor a wounded man tearing open his wounds: any one of these is a sad sight, but what shall we say of a soul putting from it the Redeemer, and choosing its own destruction? O souls, be warned and forbear from eternal suicide. There is still the way of salvation. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt he saved.” To believe is to trust. I met with one, the other night, who had imbibed the notion that saving faith was simply to believe that the doctrines of the Word of God and the statements therein made are true. Now faith includes that, but it is much more. You may believe all this Book to be true, and be lost notwithstanding your belief. You must so believe it as to act upon it by trusting. “Trust what?” say you. Let us alter the question before we answer it. “Trust whom?” You have to trust in a living person, in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died as the Substitute for those who trust him, and lives to see that those whom he bought with blood are also redeemed from their sins by power, and brought home to heaven. Trust Jesus Christ, soul. Have done with yourself as your confidence, and commit your soul unto the keeping of the faithful Redeemer.