The Word and the Cross/ the Blog: February 2026

Church: How to obtain unity in the Body

It is God's glory that produces the unity for which Jesus prayed, not outward politics. Not Military might. Not strong leadership. John 17:22. The glory which You gave Me I have given them that they may be one just as We are one.

That unity with Christ produces perfection and the winning of souls. It does not produce a super-church. Nor a watering down of truth. John 17:23. I in them, You in Me. That they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that You have sent Me...

Jesus kept His group together based on His Name. Not based on strong-arm power-plays. He asks the Father to do the same. John 17:11-12. Keep through Your name those You gave Me... While I was with them, I kept them in Your name.

When the prayer is answered, we will be united, as Christ is united with the Father. If we try to answer a prayer prayed to the Father, we will be united as men unite with men. Very imperfectly. Only God can make us one. The early disciples were already together physically, in one group. He prays that when the Spirit comes they will be made one. One is a totally different idea from together.

John must give way to Paul to show us how the prayer was answered historically. I Corinthians 12:12. As the (human) body is one... so is Christ. By one Spirit we were all baptized into one Body... Paul is not looking to a future time when all the Corinthian factions will be united into one big humongous group of people that can take over the Empire. He asserts that already the Body is one. Jesus' prayer is already answered! And continues to be whenever the Spirit falls on one new member of Christ.

There is a huge difference between striving for unity and recognizing the unity that already exists. The striving, when taken to the wrong extremes, becomes fleshly activity and creates men of renown ruling over "forces" to be reckoned with, challenges to the world's systems... but on the world's level. The recognizing, when viewed through the Spirit, leads to men and women submerged in a deluge of true Power that confounds God's enemies in God's time.

There is absolutely no reason to lay down the precious truths of God's Word in order to unite with those who wear Christ's name but do not know Christ. Beware, Christian ministries! Read afresh the story of Jehoshaphat and be wise.

Thanks for your visit! Go to https://www.icommittopray.com/ for regular updates on the persecuted church. Check out my books at Amazon.com. Send me a message at bobdiakonos7@gmail.com

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North Korea: Kim Il Sung's "Ten Principles."

Have you read Helie Lee's book about her rescue of some family members out of North Korea (In the Absence of Sun) ? I must hasten to add that although Helie has a healthy "respect" for Jesus because of Halmoni (grandma), my personal faith resembles that of Halmoni more than Helie. I do not condone the expressed lifestyle of this young Korean American, but I am captivated by the story and the very many details she shares of a land that I still wish to visit myself.

In telling the story, she mentions Kim Il Sung's "Ten Principles", a not-so-veiled replacement of God's Ten Commandments, created in an attempt to obliterate all things Biblical. All ten have to do with Kim Il Sung himself, his ideology, loyalty to him, his authority, his revolutionary thought, his centrality, confidence in him, the passing on of his thoughts to the next generation.

From page 101 & ff:

"The Ten Principles came with very specific guidelines. For example, Principle No. 3 went on to elaborate that ‘Kim Il Sung's portraits, plaster figures, statues, badges containing his pictures, publications carrying his pictures, paintings portraying his image, monuments or public notices containing his instructions...must be carefully handled and protected from being spoiled.'

"In 1985, Burundi's ambassador to Beijing checked into the Botonggang Hotel in Pyongyang. When he unpacked his bags and saw that his shoes were flattened, he stuffed a sheet of newspaper into them. A bellboy reported the ‘crime' to the police because the newspaper contained Kim Il Sung's picture. The ambassador was accused of damaging the dignity of the Great Leader, nearly causing a diplomatic incident."

Time and space fail me to record in detail Helie's reporting of the little 3-year old who caused her parents to be arrested by accidentally urinating on a Kim Il Sung booklet...

Let us allow the images of North Korea to disturb us, but only enough to pray. Depression and despair are not the goal of this blog. God will hear. God will rise up. He suffers long for His own purposes. But He is a jealous God and will not be mocked forever.

Remember Israel in Egypt 430 years! But He does arise. Is this His time?

wordandcross.com

North Korea: The brainwashed child (and ours?)

How serious is our desire for our children to know Jesus and His words? While we are not advocating brainwashing, certainly there is something a Christian can learn from the North Korean about child-rearing:

While speaking of the original Kim dictatorship, Bradley K. Martin says in his detailed treatise on the Kim dynasty, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader:

" ‘As soon as you are born you are received by a nursery, then led through a flowery gate to an eleven-year education.'

"Indeed, officials told me, mothers were entitled to seventy-seven days of maternity leave before turning their babies over to public day nurseries, or in some cases full-time nurseries. ‘Home education has an important meaning in a society where private ownership of the means of production is predominant,' Kim-Il-sung had said in a 1968 speech. ‘But it has no important meaning in a different, socialist society.'

"The state, taking over much of the parental role, had been training youngsters to worship Kim. ‘Our Great Leader is the Supreme Leader of revolution, its heart and the only center,' said one official policy statement. ‘We have to inculcate in our future generations the absolute authority of the Leader, the indisputable thoughts and instructions of the Leader, so that they may accept them as faith and the law of the land.'

"Schoolbooks portrayed Kim in his heroic roles. Their illustrations were drawings in the style of children's Biblical literature... Some pictured Kim's exploits, whether real or imagined, as a child and as a young guerrilla commander. Others depicted a mature Kim, sometimes surrounded by children in tableaux reminiscent of the Sunday-school pictures that illustrate the words of Jesus, ‘Suffer the little children to come unto Me.'

"The training and peer pressure that reinforced such images had intensified over the years. Thus, the young people I met struck me as more fanatical than North Koreans aged forty or older, whose indoctrination had not been as thoroughgoing."

So much to think about in that piece... The elder Kim truly was attempting to replace the Christ He heard about growing up in his parents' church... The power of education!... Are we not following the Communist model when we give our children over to state-run programs and schools just after birth?... Can we complain about the product of so many years of indoctrination?...What are American schools giving its children that has greater worth than what Kim gives?... Are Christian parents devoted to having the Life and Word and Way of our Dear Leader inculcated in their young ones?

Daily Podcast, wordandcross.com

Lies: From claustrophobia to the SuperBowl

Can't blame the devil for everything. Your own heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, says Jeremiah the prophet (17:9). The unredeemed unsaved heart is the center for evil on the earth. Satan would be powerless without it.

The heart and mind have been corrupted since those first wonderful days in Eden. There, we were free and happy and innocent. When we toyed with and then grabbed disobedience, a pattern began to form. Now we lie to ourselves about everything.

In my own family there is a history of neurosis, or something akin to it. One family member fears thunderstorms, another cannot drive over bridges. In my life I have noticed over the past few years a growing nervousness in enclosed spaces, especially if those spaces are 40,000 feet in the air.

I had flown all my adult life, nearly 30 years. But one night something went wrong. I had had too much caffeine, I was sitting in the back, it was night, etc. I panicked. Only in reading Scripture and offering inner praise to God was I able to come out of it.

The lie had set in. "You are in trouble. You are going to die. You will have a heart attack on this plane. You must get off NOW." I bought it. And for over two years I have dreaded the air, even though a missions call has been growing stronger.

Yes, it is "sick" when people believe lies like that...thinking things are bad when they are good. But there is a lie that potentially is worse. Thinking things are important when they aren't.

Consider the Super Bowl this weekend. Yep I'm one of the "lucky" guys living in one of the team's cities. I have the privilege of watching grown adults around me totally stressed out about whether a bag of air will make it down a 100 yard field, safely in the possession of a man with a blue and orange uniform, BEFORE a man with another color grabs it and goes the other way.

Churches are having Super Bowl parties. One church had even decided to show the game via a live feed in the sanctuary on a screen that comes down right next to the crucifix... The NFL decided not to power the image to that connection. They could not mix the religious symbolism with the secular. The church seemed to have no trouble with it.

Our minds and our hearts just keep lying to us. Remember this song sung by Evangeline Carmichael?

The heart is a rebel, and cannot be trusted,

It always is seeking its own will to do.

It has no allegiance, so desperate and wicked,

The heart is a rebel, it's true.

Its love is brief as springtime, quickly growing old;

Its hate is like the winter, desolate and cold.

But some day the rebel will bow and surrender,

Then God's love will make his heart new.

Amen. Let's give our hearts to Jesus fully while we can.

America: How low can we go?

When Minister Joe Wright was asked to open the new session of the Kansas Senate, everyone was expecting the usual generalities, but this is what they heard:

"Heavenly Father, we come before you today to ask your forgiveness and
to seek your direction and guidance. We know Your Word says, 'Woe to those who call evil good,' but that is exactly what we have done. We have lost our spiritual equilibrium and reversed our values. We confess that:

"We have ridiculed the absolute truth of Your Word and called it Pluralism.

"We have exploited the poor and called it the Lottery.

"We have rewarded laziness and called it welfare.

"We have killed our unborn and called it choice.

"We have shot abortionists and called it justifiable.

"We have neglected to discipline our children and called it building
self-esteem.

"We have abused power and called it politics.

"We have coveted our neighbor's possessions and called it ambition.

"We have polluted the air with profanity and pornography and called it
freedom of speech.

"We have ridiculed the time-honored values of our forefathers and called it
enlightenment.

"Search us, Oh, God, and know our hearts today; cleanse us from every sin
and set us free.

"Guide and bless these men and women who have been sent to direct us to the center of Your will and to openly ask these things in the name of Your Son, the living Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen."

The response was immediate. A number of legislators walked out during the prayer in protest.

In 6 short weeks, Central Christian Church, where Reverend Wright is
pastor, logged more than 5,000 phone calls with only 47 of those calls
responding negatively. The church began receiving international requests
for copies of this prayer from India, Africa, and Korea.

Commentator Paul Harvey aired this prayer on his radio program "The Rest
of the Story" and received a larger response to this program than any other he has ever aired.

With the Lord's help, may this prayer sweep over our nation and
wholeheartedly become our desire so that we again can be called, "...one
nation under God..."

(We could add one more confession to the above, on this special holiday: We have gaped in awe at a young politician standing in Springfield, Illinois, and called him Lincoln. It looks like we are going to be led down another promising but fatal path...) [Written in 2007, as Obama was campaigning.]

Daily Podcast: wordandcross.com

Christian Life: Dying with Jesus

One thing we've got to admit about the current crop of Muslims. They really believe what they believe. Death is considered part of the bargain when you enter Islam. Have you ever seen so many people willing to give away their lives?

Well, as a matter of fact, yes.

Through the years the Christian Church has seen more of its people sent to an untimely death than any religion or people group on earth or in history. As many as seventy million may have paid the ultimate price for their faith.

Just dying, or just suffering, is not that to which God's people are called. But dying with Jesus. Remember the old song?

"Dying with Jesus by death reckoned mine.

"Living with Jesus a new life Divine.

"Looking to Jesus till glory doth shine,

"Moment by moment, O Lord, I am thine.

Peter (I Peter 4:1ff) says that the mindset that says, "Jesus suffered, so must I," is a healthy one. It is the norm for us. We've lived enough in the flesh. We've had enough of this life. Let's lay it down and experience the new life.

This is where Islam falls so tragically short.

When Muslims die they are sent to the prison where the dead wait for their judgment at the "resurrection of damnation." A blaze of pain and seconds of "glory", then that's it.

When we die with and in Him, whether virtually now or in actuality later, we go to be with Jesus, our spirits free from these old bodies, and basking in the light of His Presence.

I remember the mental fight I had when I had to go in for a certain medical procedure. I'm a pretty cowardly guy in my natural man. I almost did not keep my appointment. But the benefits were there. The doc said I had to do it. And when I woke up, I knew it was all worth it. I felt great!

That's how it must be here. Entering into death on a regular basis, unafraid, knowing that Doc has prescribed these operations to bring us out perfect and happy on the other side. Arm yourself with that attitude, says Peter. Suffering and martyrdom and laying our lives down, it's our norm. Live with that mindset and life will certainly look different than it does now.

Daily Podcast: wordandcross.com

Christmas: Christmas IS Christ?

While driving through Clearwater during our most wonderful trip to Florida, I happed upon a sign posted at a large Presbyterian Church. It said simply, "Christmas IS Christ." I was at least a little while distracted from the birds and the flowers and the most un-Chicago-like temperatures.

Christmas IS Christ? Does that mean, the celebration as we know it today? Are they saying that what we celebrate every year is truly a Jesus event?

Christmas IS Christ? Is that supposed to be a historic statement? Was the holiday meant from the beginning to honor the Lord and remember His birth?

As more Florida miles got away from me, I began thinking, if there had been no incarnation, would there have been a winter celebration anyway?

I wasn't too happy with any of my responses to my questions.

Yes, Christ is honored by some, but those folks honor Him all year. No, much of what goes on in the season has to do with greed and paganism. Yes, the winter holiday itself goes back way before Jesus came, and honors the birth of the sun. It has a life of its own. Rome baptized the festivities when it declared it would celebrate the Christ-Mass at a time that coincided with the pagan celebration. Take Christ out of it, as many do, and it continues merrily on its way. Ho-ho-ho.

There is of course no command to celebrate any event in Jesus' life except His death (Lord's Supper) and burial (baptism) and resurrection (by our daily fellowship with the risen Lord.) I guess there is no explicit prohibition from other celebrations, but when they start looking like the world, we need to flee from them as from anything else Babylonian. Or at least not call them "Christian".

It's over for a year. But damage is done in so many lives. I, as a counselor, talk to students whose parents, I'm sure many of them believers, obviously went into great debt to buy them the things that their peers were getting. The pressure is so incredible. And it trains and feeds a greedy spirit.

It's over. But is the church richer? Every year, for a month, the church is stuck on a handful of songs that teach only one thing about Jesus. The Biblical texts and sermons, ditto. Then there's the cancellation of truly profitable church ministries as they are replaced by parties and food. These things ought not to be, in my opinion.

Let the world celebrate and go into debt and be gluttonous and drunken. Don't we have more than they? Has Christ ordained this strange time of year? Is Christ truly "Christmas" ?

wordandcross.com daily podcast

Hypocrisy: Phonies in your church?

(from 2007)

Three times in the last weeks I've been informed that the church is filled with phonies. Fakes. Hypocrites.

I suppose they have a point, but Phony-watchers have some blind spots.

They never seem to see the phonies in their peer group. Or their club. Or their supermarket.

People who have seen inconsistencies in you and me don't see the big loopholes in their own philosophy of life.

They don't see the inconsistencies of their behavior and attitudes. Only ours. If they blow it, they're "only human" because "people make mistakes." When we do, we're phonies.

Of course, some of us are phonies. Every group has its losers. Who bears the cross of Christ perfectly in your church? I'm thinking of a few members of my own. It wouldn't take long for the self-appointed critics to find flaws in these people, though.

God deliver us from being hypocrites, but also from being judges. Both actions are condemned by Jesus.

Speaking of Jesus, no one can rightly accuse Him of ever having been unreal. We beg those who can only see phonies in the church to take a long look at Him.

daily podcast: wordandcross.com

Birdwatching: Thoughts at an air and water show

There he was, the lonely thing, right in the midst of the glory of that day, and no one noticed him.

They say over 2 million people gathered during that 2-day event in Chicago, the famed “air and water” show. I’d listened to it on the radio, traveling to and from this bit of business or that, determining finally last year that I’d BE there next time!

And I was. My wife and I braved the heat, the traffic, the throngs, even a ride on the CTA. Things are never as wonderful as they seem, you know. It was a scorcher! To keep cool, we stood ankle deep in Lake Michigan, turning sunburned faces into a hot Chicago sky. Children unaware of our august presence splashed by with aggravating showers from time to time.

But through all the little annoyances, we were thrilled by the sights and sounds of some of men’s finest creations. Pleasure planes and war planes, loud and quiet, modern and ancient.

I forget when I saw him. Perhaps during the daring act of the “Blue Angels.” A lone gull twisting and turning and diving and rising and soaring and...no one noticed that he was outdoing every vessel in the show.

Friends joined him, and there were pigeons, too. Lowly pigeons. The lowliest of the birds was similarly outclassing these monster machines. No one has yet equaled the creation of God.

But the announcer made no mention of it. I heard no shouts or even hushed whispers as the glory of God, eloquently declared by these winged creations, hovered over the proceedings.

Reminds me of one who said it far more beautifully, Marcie Hans:

FUELED

Fueled

by a million

man-made

wings of fire-

the rocket tore a tunnel

through the sky-

and everybody cheered.

Fueled

only by a thought from God-

the seedling

urged its way

through the thicknesses of black-

and as it pierced

the heavy ceiling of the soil-

and launched itself

up into outer space-

one

even

clapped.

Isn’t it always the way, believer? You brought a soul to Christ the other day. Through the Spirit’s work in you, someone now will live forever. On that day, a fine well-known doctor saved a fine well-known patient and the world roared. The patient may live a few more years now.

But then we do not seek glory now. God has promised it for later, when crowns of same shall be placed on our heads. Crowns which we will then be able to snatch away and cast at the feet of Jesus, claiming we were unprofitable servants. And so we were and are. Created and programmed by God like those pigeons and gulls, but even in our “unprofitable” state, we are honored by Christ , and told that we are loved .

Little bird, your Day is coming.

Thanks for your visit! Go to https://www.icommittopray.com/ for regular updates on the persecuted church. Check out my books at Amazon.com. Send me a message at bobdiakonos7

Daily Podcast at wordandcross.com