Our Job Description Part 2 Trilogy

 So, now you're saved.  What's changed in your life?

Not much?  Oh, you have no doubt found a few habits you are now uncomfortable with, that seem to have no place in your new life and you're trying to "clean house" but though you've been concentrating on their removal, they stubbornly hang on. 

That doesn't work--remember the rule "Whatever you do, don't think about a purple elephant"? Your mind is a vacuum, filled by whatever you prioritize. The only way to delete something is by replacing it with some that will serve you better.  Replace something bad for you with something beneficial, something that gives strength or wisdom. As you run across a Bible verse that seems to bear on your current concern, memorize it or add it to your journal so you can readily return to it as needed. Think of it as arrows in your quiver for another stormy day of battle, Kemosabe, because you will need all the ammunition in your arsenal against The Enemy, all the inner strength in your spirit, muscles to keep yourself on the right path and guidance to protect your neighbor from a destructive path.

Don't engage the Enemy without a plan or without becoming armed with Scripture and prayer. Any soldier will tell you, preparation, training and complete faith in your Leader must precede your battle. The life you have chosen will be an ongoing battle with an enemy well-versed in warfare by deceit, temptation, lies/to remind you how powerless He thinks you are. 

You don't feel it? Read the training manual (the Holy Bible, God's Word, your guarantee of ultimate success). You will be trained on the job and expertise comes with experience and the feeling of confidence comes when you look at your yesterdays' successes with Him. You may never feel ready to begin but He is! Never leave home without Him/

Above all, don't sit passively by, watching the battle of good vs. evil. Stop sitting around waiting for the Holy Spirit to zap you instantly into the saint you already are, and you just don't realize yet.  Behave like a saint and you will believe you are one. You may never feel ready or good enough (no one is) Show up, suit up, Buttercup, for a thrilling, bumpy road ahead. You didn't think this journey would be a picnic after the experience of Jesus, did you?    It is soooo worth it.

r the Holy Spirit to Zap you into becoming a saint instantly--you had Him when you said yes to Jesus--He now is your daily Companion--He's ready when you are!  He goes where you go! Report for duty; you now are under command of the One who triumphs and retains complete control of the world He created for all His faithful followers. Hallelujah!

Family Insurance: for Sam and Summer and their husbands (and any seeking family)

Little Things Are Big Things to God

  

Troubles piled on troubles, Aggravations on top. What’s going on here?  I didn’t sign up for all this. Much more and I just might lose my cool. I’m not perfect but I try to live right.

Okay, when all else fails, look up. I’ve learned that much. Listen instead of complaining. Okay, Lord. What did I do wrong now? No? It’s an answer to my prayer? Really???  I asked for ---- patience?  Oh yeah. Not how I expected the way you would teach me, but very effective.  . I remember now; I signed up for the course Following Jesus 101

My biggest problem may have been overlooking how small a problem impatience could cost me and others so much heartburn. Turning pages  in my Bible, my fingers stopped in Exodus telling about how drastic Your corrections can be when we lack faith and patience instead of remembering all the past miracles you brought into our lives—40 years wandering the desert, never able to enter Canaan, their promised land of milk and honey, just for their complaints and disobedience, tiny little things like building an idol to worship rather than the Almighty One who had shown them great mercy and promised great things for their nation. 

They could have learned this lesson painlessly if they had looked back –or ahead—at all the trouble brought into the world when Abraham tried to “help God” fulfill His promise of a son, a very important son, by improvising, bringing forth a son who has afflicted the world in every generation since and will continue to do so until this world ends in a war between his two sons. Abraham had failed to realize God’s promise included his wife, who much later gave him the son promised by God, who will eventually bring forth God’s son, the Savior of us all. 

How could there be a better example of the snowballing effects of rushing God instead of waiting prayerfully for His perfect timing, intruding in our impatience as we wait for His answers? 

A farmer shows us how to wait patiently for God’s timing: He plants a seed. Cares for it, waters the sprouting tree, removing any wild plants risking its growth and waits for the day he sees a tiny bud, then a small green fruit and finally a luscious juicy peach. He didn’t rush out and bite the small bitter immature fruit; he waited, exercised patience, endurance and faith until God provided fulfillment of perfect maturity of His plan and promise. His ways are not our ways. Wait upon the Lord.

God doesn’t need our help, just our cooperation and faith.

 

  

  

How to Catch a Monkey

An old tale based in Africa is a lesson in practical wisdom. Place peanuts into a hollowed-out gourd and leave it in a tree and watch. Soon a monkey will come by and smell the nuts and reach into the gourd. His fist closed around the nuts is bigger than the hole in the gourd. He has the choice to open his fist and drop the nuts onside or stay trapped, holding tight to the nuts he can’t remove. 

Dr. Jeffress, FBC, used this tale to demonstrate the choices of response when someone offends us. Reply angrily or return an offense to our offender (which puts you at the same moral level as him into an unforgiven sinner) or to remember His grace given to you and others who have done or said good things (which you may not have fully earned) and walk away remembering God said “Vengeance is Mine” and thank Him instead for all the times He Has forgiven your trespasses.

Exchanging insults or resentments will take you farther from your walk with your God, raises a barrier making it difficult for you to come freely to your Lord.  Bitterness is louder in your heart than the urge to talk to your Father. Your heart is engaged fully with the hurt you received; you have become a bondservant—a slave—to your offender. Your behavior is in his control.

 Or you can open your fist, release the hurt for God to handle and maintain that sweet fellowship with our Lord. Perhaps your offender was a fellow Christian having a bad day, causing his anger and your treatment may remind him to take his anger to the Lord to handle,  and renew his strength and relationship. Perhaps your offender does not know or to follow God’s teaching; he may continue inflicting his misery on you and/or others, but he will not go unchallenged; judgment will follow in God’s timing, the promise of heaping coals of fire upon his head

A New Testament example tells of a slave who owed his master more than he could never live long enough to repay and begged for more time and it was granted, though the king knew he would never be able to repay. Yet the slave went out to another who owed him a tiny bit of money and threatened him with prison unless he paid. When the king heard, he pointed out that the ungrateful wretch, who had been forgiven so much, had failed to forgive another so little, and condemned the ungrateful slave to prison.

Refusal to engage your enemy refrains from disturbing your status as a Child of our King and gives the offender a grace-filled span of time to change before his judgment day arrives. Will you choose to behave as a child of the King or as a monkey?

 

               If you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. but if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.
–Matthew 6:14-15


            And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. Romans 8:28

The Precious Gift

 After I opened all the gifts from my friends—funny, sweet, or practical things now sating amidst discarded wrappings and clutter—I saw one more package. Stunningly beautiful Why hadn’t I noticed  it before? No tag, no clue of the sender’s name. I put it aside until my guests had gone and I could examine it more thoroughly. 

Who loved me enough to send such a beautiful package-- too lovely to cast aside such colorful, artfully decorated wrappings? I decided to leave it front and center of my coffee table to enjoy longer and admired it every day for a while.  Admiration morphed into a routine glance now and then and an occasional flick of my feather duster. When someone remarked on its beauty, asking why it remained unopened, I still insisted it was bound to be more beautiful than whatever was inside and I wanted to enjoy its mystery a little longer. 

One day, when I came home from a disappointing visit with my doctor, I lay on my couch, wondering what would become of me, My gaze fell on the gift and I picked it up. Wiping away a film of dust, I found my hands ripping away that once vividly beautiful package—no reason to save it for later when there might not be a later. 

Inside was only one pure white scroll with a title in gold lettering:  Adoption Certificate and it bore my name.  “With all costs borne by the Provider” I read, I have been named a Child of the King of All There Is. Entitled as co-heir with the Son of the Provider to inhabit the household of the Most High Creator, Provider, Healer, Loving King. 

I thought back over the months I skimped and saved, ill and needy. Barely getting by when  all this awaited me. All I had to do was receive the gift offered to me.

 

 

                                                     

   Th 

IN CASE OF FIRE---

Open Here. This new apartment has all the bells and whistles! It’s fireproof—why include am old-fashioned relic like this ancient warning from the olden days of horse-driven fire wagons? Forget that. I turned away. Still, occasionally I found myself glancing over at the box on the wall that seemed to draw my attention at nighttime, when worries seemed to invade my thoughts—rumors of a layoff looming at work and this apartment lease just signed. Pacing the floor, I eyed the box on the wall designed to provide safety. A good night’s sleep will do me more good--but do I smell a whiff of smoke? Probably someone cooking a late supper has left a pot on the stove—the apartment manager will check it out.

Definitely smoke, stronger now, closer perhaps. Maybe I’d better do something. Call the manager/ No answer! In case of fire. But there’s no fire, just smoke--but more than earlier. Why isn’t someone t taking care of this? Doesn't anyone see the danger? Ow! My door feels hot! My eyes seek the ancient box on the wall—would it even still work? I reach for the box. Maybe------

You have such an emergency box tucked away somewhere, in case your troubles get bigger than you can handle, called The Holy Bible. But why ignore a whiff of smoke until your coat tail is on fire before opening the book? Why not read some of the fire prevention teachings inside and avoid the death traps all around you? Didn’t you buy fire insurance to protect your physical dwelling? Isn’t your own life worth much more?

Rights and Wrongs

                             

Each of us has certain rights; common ethics warn us those rights end at point of contact with someone else’s nose. And that settles our limits to our satisfaction, in most disputes. And we guard those rights religiously. For some of us that’s our closest connection to religion, possibly our only contact, but who really needs that anyway?

Really? Just try to explain to someone that there are truths about this world and the next that, regardless of their opinion, they just don’t have all the facts. Their freedom has an expiration date and certain limits as well.  For instance, Mr. “Don’t Tell-Me-What-To-Do on the freeway,      speeding to a party on Saturday evening suddenly sees a highway worker waving a red flag. Mr. "Don’t" yells out his window: ”Get outa my way; I’m late.” The worker shakes his head, won’t budge. Mr. Don’t yells again “You don’t have the right to stop me. I have a right to go wherever I please:”

                                                    Hit the pause button.

Who is right? Mr. Don’t thinks that he is, He's entitled to his opinion, but he’s missing vital facts about his immediate future. The worker has nothing to gain—he’s simply trying to help a stranger and his boss handed him a sign to wave at oncoming traffic. Anyone failing to stop is putting himself in danger--He doesn’t know his path will lead him to forfeit all his rights, all his future.

Look back at the smiling friend holding a Bible tract out to you. Take it. It won’t cost much of your valuable time, and you just might find good news therein. You still have all your rights, plus the right to accept the promise of new life as a child of the King of All.

You know a bargain when you see it, don't you?