Born To Win Podcast - With Ronald L. Dart

I was standing, looking out an open window in my hotel room at Victoria Station in London one night. My wife and I had been to the theater, had just got back in, and opened the window for a little fresh air. I heard a rumble, uncharacteristic of London weather, and I remarked, I hope that’s thunder. It wasn’t. The IRA had set off a bomb two blocks from our hotel in a trash bin along the street. No one was hurt, but it was a little disconcerting. I can’t help wondering what the IRA realistically hoped to gain in all this. Were they really doing their thing with a goal in mind, or are they like bunch of Ozark boys turning over outhouses on Halloween?I am persuaded that, in all too many cases, people who are fighting in wars have long since forgotten what the war is all about. They don’t remember the grievance or, if they do, they have only heard about it from their great-great-grandfathers and never, in all their lifetime, experience the grievance in question. Why on earth did the Irish

When you settle in to read the Bible, you run into any number of difficulties—none of them fatal, of course. The sense of the Bible is not that hard, it is just that the writers of the Bible wrote, not only in a different language, but out of a different culture. Things that would be important to the modern reader don’t even cross their minds. There are mysteries in the Bible, to be sure, but there is enough plain talk for us to know where we stand with God. The more difficult problem is that the modern reader is used to history being presented in a certain way. The ancient writers of history operated on somewhat different principles.One of the confusing things, for example, about reading the Book of Kings is the structure of the book. 1 Kings tells the story of the division of Israel into two kingdoms. After that, the story interleaves the parallel history of the two kingdoms and it is easy to get lost. There are any number of Bible handbooks and encyclopedias that provide charts and chronologies

At the Last Supper, after washing his disciples' feet, Jesus said something of singular importance. He said, You call me master and lord, and you say well for so I am. The American reader is likely to take these two words, master and lord, as synonyms; but when the King James translators sat down and wrote this out, the head of a school was a master. Even to this day in most English schools the person who runs the school is the headmaster. Consequently, they chose the word master because to their English readers it would convey the idea of a teacher; and not merely a garden-variety, run-of-the-mill teacher, but a significant master of his subject.Jesus said, You call me teacher and lord, and rightly so because that is what I am. The words in the Greek mean a master of a school and a sovereign lord, so they are not synonyms at all; and they define two very different relationships that a person will have with Jesus Christ. So let's take a closer look at these two words, these two relationships, and their signif

By now, everyone realizes that we have a leadership crisis, not only in our country, but in the world at large. I wonder how we got to this place? Where does leadership come from and, maybe more importantly, where does it go? I believe that leadership is a gift from God, and if you’ll spare me a little time, I’ll explain to you why I think that. First, two statements about gifts from God, one from James and one from the Psalms:Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.James 1:17 KJ2000You have ascended on high, you have led captivity captive: you have received gifts for men; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them. Blessed be the Lord, who daily loads us with benefits, even the God of our salvation. Selah.Psalm 68:18–19 KJ2000For some reason, we would tend to assume that God only gives his gifts to people who deserve them. I used to think so. I would ha

Never take counsel of your fears. The saying is often attributed to Andrew Jackson who also, plainly, read his Bible. It is fascinating how often fear strips a man of victories already won. This was the case with one Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. After the death of Solomon, God handed him the largest portion of Israel—10 of the 12 tribes. He was a good man, and an energetic leader. But he was afraid that, having made the break with Solomon’s son Rehoboam, the people would eventually return to the unity of the Temple. It was not an unreasonable fear except for the fact that God had given him the kingdom and stood surety for it. This fear led him to a decision with disastrous long-term consequences.Therefore the king took counsel, and made two calves of gold, and said unto them, It is too much for you to go up to Jerusalem: behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. And he set the one in Beth-el, and the other put he in Dan. And this thing became a sin: for the people wen

When you read those books of the Bible that contain the history of Israel, the lessons come at you one after the other. There is a man in the Book of Kings named Jeroboam, for example, who will embody several of them. Jeroboam is described as a mighty man of valor. Now, what that means in biblical-speak is that he was a fighter, and very good at it. He was a good man, an able man, and King Solomon promoted him and placed him over all the affairs of the house of Joseph. That made him the head man in the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh in the north. But he had a higher endorsement than that of Solomon, with whom God was, by this time, thoroughly disappointed.And it came to pass at that time when Jeroboam went out of Jerusalem, that the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite found him in the way; and he had clad himself with a new garment; and the two were alone in the field: And Ahijah caught the new garment that was on him, and tore it in twelve pieces: And he said to Jeroboam, Take you ten pieces: for thus says the Lord

When you are reading the history in the Bible, you have to resist the temptation to see things in terms familiar to the modern reader. Take the idea of cities, for example. Solomon has finished the Temple, and somewhere along the way, he has married the daughter of Pharaoh.Well, Pharaoh wants to give his daughter a present, so he goes up along the coastal plain and takes a city named Gezer. He slew the Canaanites who live there, burnt the place with fire, and then gave it to his daughter as a present. What kind of a present is that! Gezer probably wasn’t much of a town to start with. Now his daughter gets, as a present from her dad, a lot of burnt-out houses, and a few hundred corpses of Canaanites. What is this?What you need to take away from the account is that it wasn’t the houses that were important, it was the real estate. Gezer might have controlled a few hundred square miles of good agricultural land. And it may also have provided a prime location for an outpost—a fortress, if you wil

One of the most incredible museums that the world has ever known was also one that hardly anyone ever got to visit; it was the temple that King Solomon built. When the construction of the Temple was finally complete, Solomon brought in the things that King David had dedicated—silver, gold, furnishings—and placed them in the Temple’s treasuries. What a museum it must have made…but the general population never got to go in. Nevertheless, the grand opening still made for quite an enjoyable party. You’ll find the story of this celebration, and the dedication speech that accompanied it, in 1 Kings, chapter 8.1 Then Solomon assembled the elders of Israel, and all the heads of the tribes, the chiefs of the fathers of the children of Israel, unto king Solomon in Jerusalem, that they might bring up the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of the city of David, which is Zion.2 And all the men of Israel assembled themselves unto king Solomon at the feast in the month Ethanim, which is the s

We Christians have an anxiety about us—about who we are, about our failures, about our differences, about our spats—and we let these anxieties prevent us from doing and saying things that need to be said and done; not only in church, but in the community and in the world.Peggy Noonan - Patriots, Then and Now Link 1 | Link 2

Do you suppose God would ever call a man to be a lawyer or, perhaps, a governor? (And, no, I am not about to tell a lawyer joke.) There is a funny thing about Christian thinking when it comes to a divine calling. We tend to think of God's calling having solely to do with church work or ministry. But is that the right view of the matter?There are two men in the Bible who cause me to think otherwise. They weren't called to be lawyers, but they were nonetheless called to a surprising vocation. Let me tell you their stories:Once upon a time, there was a man named Jacob who had 12 sons—all born to him while out of country. The last was born of the wife that Jacob loved. He was named Joseph, which means added because he was added well beyond the expected family. And because he was the son of Jacob’s old age and of his most loved wife, he was a favorite son, and Jacob made him the famous coat of many colors.When the lad was a mere 17 years old, he was bringing performance reports to his father that did n

Sometimes, in the Bible, you come across descriptions, details, and lists that can be a little hard to follow. One example of this is the description in 1 Kings 6 of the construction of Solomon’s temple. It’s not too easy to work your way through it, and there are just too many details missing to get an accurate picture. You can find artists’ conceptions of it in publications and on the internet, but they are all different. Still, when you read through it you get a general impression of the size, the shape, the importance of the building.And it came to pass in the four hundred and eightieth year after the children of Israel were come out of the land of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month Ziv, which is the second month, that he began to build the house of the Lord. As for the house which king Solomon built for the Lord, the length thereof was threescore cubits, and the breadth thereof twenty cubits, and the height thereof thirty cubits.1 Kings 6:1&ndas

In Gibeon the Lord appeared to Solomon in a dream by night: and God said, Ask what I shall give you. And Solomon said, You have shown unto your servant David my father great mercy, according as he walked before you in truth, and in righteousness, and in uprightness of heart with you; and you have kept for him this great kindness, that you have given him a son to sit on his throne, as it is this day. And now, O Lord my God, you have made your servant king instead of David my father: and I am but a little child: I know not how to go out or come in. And your servant is in the midst of your people whom you have chosen, a great people, that cannot be numbered nor counted for multitude. Give therefore your servant an understanding heart to judge your people, that I may discern between good and bad: for who is able to judge this your so great a people?1 Kings 3:5–9 KJ2000As far as I can tell, by this time Solomon was grown. But this is the way that he looked at himself—as a naïf, as a person who had no s

Nothing is ever easy in the Middle East, and the transition from the man who was Israel’s greatest fighting king to her greatest peacetime king was stormy. It wasn’t that there was a problem between David and Solomon. The problem was another son (probably David’s oldest) who decided to usurp the kingdom while David was, he thought, too weak to do anything about it.His name was Adonijah and, ironically, he was the brother of Absalom. He had the same mother, and his father David had doted on him as he had on Absalom. David, it seems, was a great judge of men except when it came to his own children. Even so, it wasn’t his will that Adonijah succeed him. He had made a promise to appoint Solomon as king.Adonijah made a very strong power move. You could call it an attempted coup, but I think he thought of it as merely establishing himself in his rightful position. He also had Joab and Abiathar (the leading general of the army and a well-known priest, respectively) with him. They had a big co

Abraham, the father of the faithful, is obviously the greatest figure in the Old Testament. But the greatest man in the history of Israel has to be King David. He was not only a king, he was a prophet. David was not a priest, and he never attempted to usurp the office of the priesthood as Saul did, but he was a man after God’s own heart. He was a man’s man, who men could admire and follow. He was also in the direct line of the Messiah to come. He was, simply put, a type of Christ.The last chapters of 2 Samuel appear to contain appendices to David’s life and career. They are in no special order, but seem to have been copied onto the end of the scroll before it was finally considered finished. In 2 Samuel 23, we have what are said to be the last words of David. We’ll hear from him after this, but this seems to be what David wanted to record as a kind of legacy.Now these are the last words of David. David the son of Jesse said, and the man who was raised up on high, the anointed of the Go

Halloween is an odd event—very odd, in a way, because in its origins it was not evil; it was actually good. A number of you probably know that Halloween is All Hallows Even; in other words, All Hallows Eve—the evening before All Hallows. And All Hallows is All Saints day. And, originally, All Saints Day (November 1st) was the day when all the saints were honored. In other words, it's a time that the Church had set aside to honor those people who had lived exemplary lives, who had blessed others by their lives, and were considered saints by the Church at that time.October 31st, though, among non-Christian Celtic people, was a different matter altogether. It was the festival of Samhain. What you may not know is the fact it was also New Year's Eve in Celtic and Anglo-Saxon England at that time. It was actually the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. It took place in the autumn, as a matter of fact. It was an occasion for fire festivals, they lit huge bonfires on top of hills to frighten

Excuse me for asking, but what’s wrong with you people? Why on earth would you dress up your children like witches, or hobgoblins, ghosts, demons, dead men’s bones and then send out to commit extortion on your neighbors by demanding treats and threatening tricks if the neighbors don’t come across? What could you possibly be thinking and why allow your children to go to the door of a house of a total stranger and accept gifts of candy? I thought we didn’t want our children accepting candy from strangers. And anyway, it’s gotten to the place where you have to take the candy and the apples and stuff down to the hospital to have them x-rayed to be sure there isn’t a razor blade embedded in it somewhere. My, can’t we afford to go out and buy some candy for our kids? Do we have to send them around the neighbor’s house begging for it?They call it Halloween because it falls on the eve of All Hallows or All Saints Day. This is the day when the church honors all the great

When I was growing up, Fascism was a political term in common use. I was seven years old when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and the years ahead saw us occupied with the defeat of fascism. I can’t say I knew what it meant. I just knew it was bad. I have this uncanny feeling that, as fascism rears its ugly head again in our world, that a lot of people still don’t know what it means.I had a strange sense of déjà vu watching Oliver North’s War Stories production dealing with the death march in Bataan and the use of slave labor in Burma. The Japanese treatment of prisoners was, excuse the term, inhuman. And the same inhuman spirit—a spirit of fascism—seems to possess some parts of Islam to this day. And I sometimes wonder if the term inhuman may say more than we realize. The way the Japanese overlords treated their own soldiers as less than human gave them license to act inhuman. And, of course, the Germans, while slightly more civilized, were still possessed of an inhuman spirit.

Christian people have often failed in their responsibilities to their fellow man. This is not terribly surprising. After all, we are human. Jesus, in a couple of his parables suggested that as many as half of us who call ourselves by his name will fail. And, in the end, none of us can escape the judgment that will fall on us for how we live and act in this miserable world.A date that few remember is April 1, 1933. In Germany, it was a beginning. On this day a boycott of Jewish-owned shops began. Members of the Brownshirts picketed the shops to see to it that the boycott was successful. The hostility toward Jews grew day by day. Many shops and restaurants began to refuse service to Jews. In some parts of Germany, Jews were banned from public parks, swimming pools, and public transportation. Germans were encouraged not to use Jewish doctors and lawyers. Jewish civil servants and teachers were fired.As troubling as all that was to me, what was far worse was coming to realize that throughout this period, leaders

The German people are, in every sense of the word, a great people—intelligent, innovative, accomplished. But for me, the question about the Germans is always colored by the dark shades of Adolf Hitler, and the question of what happened to them…and to the Jews of Europe.Not long ago, I presented a program titled How Freedom is Lost. I turned back the pages to an episode in the history of Israel–you can read it for yourself in 1 Samuel, chapter eight. It came at the end of what may have been a period of unparalleled freedom, that has never been before or since. And the story of why they laid that freedom down, and of what followed after, is an object lesson we must never forget. I am not going to retell that story today. (I will tell you how to get a free CD of that program a little later.) What I want to do today is to draw another lesson from much more recent history, and to consider the implications for Christians living right now.I knew that Germany was a great nation in European history.

Would you make a treaty with the Devil? It is a silly question, isn’t it? You would never do anything like that. And yet, nations do it all the time.We could argue that no one would knowingly make a deal with the Devil, because he is a known liar and a sworn adversary. You wouldn’t believe him. You know he is your enemy. There is no way. The only reason he would make a deal with you is to do you harm. It would be to gain an advantage, to lull you into making a mistake, and eventually to do you in.In reading Winston Churchill’s The Gathering Storm I was struck by how much the nations risked on the treaties they trusted to prevent another terrible world war. I think it is fair to say that we sometimes find ourselves worn down by the world. And so, while we would never make an outright deal with the Devil, we are all too willing to make compromises with him, and for the same reasons nations made deals with Hitler.