Taking Advantage of Grace

It was during four years at the young age of 24 that I had the privilege to sit on the bench as a Municipal Court judge in the state of Ohio. During the next four years I heard and judged over 4,300 cases. Why did I become a judge? There were many times I asked myself that question while arraigning someone or cleaning up paperwork at 1:00 a.m.  I still had a full time job.

Previous judges had the reputation of being unfair or playing “favorites”. Therefore, I believed that a Christian  would make a better judge.   I learned many life lessons during my tenure on the bench with one of the most prominent being that guilty people want to get “around the law”.  On more than a couple of occasions, I was asked to “bend the law” to help an individual.

Some people used my personal convictions of grace and mercy as a reason why I should let them “off the hook”. It was during those times the verse in Matthew 5:17 became important to me. One case in particular comes to mind. A young 25 year old man had been arrested for assault on a four-year old boy. The man lived in an apartment complex and had been drinking in a local bar for most of the evening. When he arrived home, he was so intoxicated that he knocked on the door of the wrong apartment. When a strange woman opened the door, he barged in and began yelling at her to get out of his apartment. Then her little boy came out of the bedroom, and the man picked him up by his tee shirt and threw him into the refrigerator. The incriminating evidence included a hospital report and the bloody tee shirt.

The man pleaded not guilty because he blamed the bar owner as being responsible for his condition. When he was found guilty of the crime, he asked me for grace and mercy. At that time, I openly acknowledged God’s mercy and grace in my life as I often discussed such things from the bench (I could do that in my court).  I reminded him that God’s grace was not to be used as a license to break the law.

I concluded by telling him that laws were created to protect people and when they are broken, consequences follow. I visited him in jail afterward to discuss his real problem of alcoholism and his need for a relationship with the Lord. When he was released, he got help.

God’s grace does not mean that we are not guilty for our actions. There are consequences for inappropriate behavior and actions.

For Christ followers, the difference is that Jesus stands before a highest Judge and says, “Yes, he is guilty, but I took all his punishment on the cross. Look at my hands. My grace has covered those sins.”

Each of us should revisit our relationship with Christ. Knowing Him does not excuse us from obeying the laws of the land. Rather, we should strive to keep the laws as a testimony of our love for the Lord. We should deeply appreciate His grace, and realize that our sentence has been permanently commuted.

Honorable Judge Gary Balser

The Heart of Valentine's Day!

Valentine’s Day can be a day of joy, frustration and sadness. Whether it was established as a religious holiday, remembering a martyr, celebrating a Greek god’s son, or even the promotion of card, chocolate, or flower companies, we use this holiday to reflect how we feel about someone special. Historically, the red heart is a Valentine’s Day symbol that represents “love”.

Centuries ago, people did not know that the heart pumped life sustaining blood through their circulatory system. However, they did realize that the heart beat faster when a person was excited or frustrated. For this reason they believed that the heart was the center of one’s soul.

The Bible references the “heart” over 865 times. These include references to emotion, feelings, attitude, and action. Now for the connection. Without the heart, our blood would not circulate throughout our bodies. We could not fight infections; we could not keep the brain sharp. For those in the medical field, you can name numerous other vital needs for the heart. We are all familiar with the vital role that the heart plays in our bodies. We run, walk, eat right, and try and keep the physical heart in shape. What about the heart that the Bible speaks about and the reason for celebrating Valentine’s Day?

When you give your heart (feelings, emotion, dedication, love) to someone they get a lot of attention. Recall the start of a relationship? There were e-mails, telephone calls, gifts, and numerous gestures to openly show your affection for someone. As the relationship matured, other interferences of life pulled us away from all that attention. Did we care any less? No! It’s just that we should have developed the closeness that a maturing relationship brings without all the ecstatic noise. But, by no means should it stop the open romantic affections for each other.  I have been on my emotional honeymoon for over eleven years and will continue to fix a hot breakfast for my beloved every day.

Our relationship with our Lord should mature in the same way. Recall when you first gave your life and heart to Him? Joy and excitement was felt by you and was shared by everyone around you. Then either we matured the relationship with the Lord or pulled away to our old lifestyles. You control the relationship.

As you celebrate Valentine’s Day, remember that everyday should be a “heart” day for special people in your life. Most importantly it should be a “heart” day for the one who breathed life into you and started that heart beating.

Jesus and UFO's

As for me it is fascinating to watch the UFO programs on TV today.  I actually saw a UFO in 1965 on my home from work at 9:30 p.m.  But that is for another time. 

One show, “Jesus and UFOs”,  finds the narrator beginning in Genesis with Moses and Enoch. The case for rationalization of miraculous events quickly assumed that the times Moses was on the Mount talking to God, the division of the Red Sea, and other instances were actually the activities of space ships and aliens that presented themselves as Gods.

Enoch being taken into heaven without experiencing death (Hebrews 11:5) was offered as more proof of UFO abduction.

Listening to each event in the Old Testament, the narrator rationalized that God and the angels were really visitors from another planet who used their space ships to direct the lives of these people who called on God. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed by alien lasers fired from their ships.

I almost turned the channel on the TV  then the program came back from commercial and began to discuss the birth of Christ. They said, as fact, that Mary was abducted by an alien and impregnated, then returned to earth to carry the child. The angels in the field were aliens pointing the way to their success. According to them, the powers of Jesus were just those of a normal alien in a human body.

Time and time again I talked back to the television and almost turned it off, but wanted to see how far they would go to try and destroy Christianity. Only one time did I hear the narrator talk about the events being “a possibly” or “might have been”.

It was left to the viewer to rationalize whether fact or theory. Then I thought, that is exactly what Satan wants us to believe.

There is no need for “Faith”, “Belief”, “Love”, “Grace” or “Relationship”. Satan wants us to think there is no entity more powerful than our rationalization of a UFO and aliens who should direct our lives and our religion.

Since the producers of this program do not discount that Jesus lived, taught, healed, died, and rose again, they use something we know very little about (UFOs) to move us away from a personal relationship with the Lord.

To them they want us to get rid of faith in God’s miracles, the creation around us, and His living in our heart but instead to believe that our religious relationship should be built on Unidentified Flying Objects and aliens. 

Let’s see, experiencing a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe or looking skyward for the invasion of something unknown.

Not a tough decision, huh?