Driving

Many Christians dread the thought of leaving this world. Why? Because so many have stored up their treasures on earth, not in heaven. Each day brings us closer to death. If your treasures are on earth; that means each day brings you closer to losing your treasures.  Randy Alcorn

I was watching the news this morning and a man in New Zealand is 105 years old.  That in itself is an amazing accomplishment but the really interesting thing is he just renewed his driver’s license.  He said the first car he ever drove didn’t have a steering wheel but a stick and he received his driver’s license in 1925. They said he had only had one minor accident and no traffic tickets in the 92 years he has been driving. I thought this was an amazing feat until they showed him driving.  There were nothing but cows and open fields where he lived.  He could run off the road and get back on and no one would be the wiser. 

I was driving to work and I noticed a car in the right lane that wasn’t going the speed limit.  When I pulled alongside the car it was a gentleman that looked to be about 95 and he wasn’t going the speed limit.  He was white knuckling the steering wheel and he was about 20mph under the speed limit and he was on a major freeway.  I started praying for him immediately. 

When I think about the number of elderly individuals on the highway it sometimes scares me.  I can remember when my grandmother got pulled over by a policeman.  Well, I can’t say pulled over because she ran a stop sign but she wouldn’t stop.  I am not sure if she ever looked in the rearview mirror to see the flashing lights or if she just wouldn’t stop until she got home.  The policeman had to follow her to her house to get her to stop. I admit there are some young drivers that are just as bad, what with texting and talking on the phone while driving.  

   

When God created Adam and Eve there was no vehicle to drive them around the Garden of Eden. Can you imagine having nothing to do but walk around and tend the plants and animals in the Garden and spend time with God?  Then Adam and Eve listened to a snake and here we are. We are born new only to later grow old and forget which pedal is the brake or accelerator. I am so looking forward to heaven.  I read that there will be streets of gold and continuous light but I didn’t see a car dealership in the scenario so I don’t think we will need one. 

        

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I know that I am heading toward old age. I pray that when the time comes for me to quit driving that you will give me the courage to stop when it is time.  We are so dependent on vehicles to get us everywhere. I long for heaven where I won’t need to be rushing to the next appointment or meeting and where I will have all the time in the world to sit and talk to You. 

Scripture: “But of that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, but My Father only. But as the days of Noah were, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. For as in the days before the flood, they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered the ark, and did not know until the flood came and took them all away, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. Then two men will be in the field: one will be taken and the other left. Two women will be grinding at the mill: one will be taken and the other left. Watch therefore, for you do not know what hour your Lord is coming. But know this, that if the master of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. Therefore you also be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.  Matthew 24:36-44

But I saw no temple in it, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city had no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God illuminated it. The Lamb is its light. And the nations of those who are saved shall walk in its light, and the kings of the earth bring their glory and honor into it.  Its gates shall not be shut at all by day (there shall be no night there). And they shall bring the glory and the honor of the nations into it.  But there shall by no means enter it anything that defiles, or causes an abomination or a lie, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life. Revelation 21:22-27

Our Responsibility To Others

Loving others in a biblical manner involves your thoughts, words, and actions and is a sign of your being a disciple of Christ. Loving others biblically is dependent on your commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ and is not dependent on people, circumstances, or your feelings.  John C. Broger

Every day you are witnessing. What are you witnessing to? Your witness is the total package of your attitudes, character, and actions. It does not lie.  Winkie Pratney

Do you ever think about the responsibility you have to others?  I started thinking about the daily things in my life that I do that could nurture another person or break them down.

What a huge responsibility God has placed on us. If you think about what other people might see in you that could give them a picture of who God is, would that picture be a masterpiece worth more than money can buy or would it be a paint by numbers picture of the world.

When I was a kid they had paint by numbers kits you could buy at the TG&Y.  A picture was printed on a canvas in light gray and different numbers were assigned to each section on the print that corresponded to a paint color that came with the kit.  You would select the color that corresponded and paint inside the lines.  In the end you would have a completed picture.  One of the early advertisements proclaimed that you could make “A BEAUTIFUL OIL PAINTING THE FIRST TIME YOU TRY”.  All this really meant was that if you followed the directions you could produce something that looked exactly like every other paint by number kit produced of that picture.

When we start to think that the world has the best life can offer we move away from becoming a “masterpiece” and move toward becoming a “paint by number” picture.  Each one of us has a responsibility to each person we come into contact with, to alter that person’s eternal destination.  When we start to think that what we do and how we act doesn’t have consequences; that is the beginning of our slide down that slippery slope into sin. 

When I think that if someone was watching what I do and something I did caused them to sin; that scares me.  Because when I do that I have sinned against what God specifically tells me to do.  If our actions cause one person to turn away from God we are responsible.  If God tells me that if I cause “one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea”, that gets my attention.  Don’t ever think that what you do isn’t affecting someone around you. If I have children, friends, family members, neighbors or strangers in my life, then I have a responsibility to them to be the masterpiece God calls me to be. 

 

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, You created me in Your likeness.  It is my responsibility to present to the world a picture of You.  I can follow along in the world’s wake and be like every other paint by number picture, or I can devote my life to becoming a masterpiece.  A masterpiece that is a reflection of You. 

                

Scripture: “Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea. Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes! “If your hand or foot causes you to sin, cut it off and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the everlasting fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and cast it from you. It is better for you to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire.  Matthew 18:6-9

Be Different

The Image of Christ that is forming within us--that is life's one charge. Let every project stand aside for that. "Till Christ be formed," no man's work is finished, no religion crowned, no life has fulfilled its end. Is the infinite task begun? When, how, are we to be different? Time cannot change men. Death cannot change men. Christ can. Wherefore PUT ON CHRIST.  Henry Drummond

Is eternity your guide and is God your GPS?  I have GPS on my car and one of the things I noticed last weekend is that when I didn’t listen to her instructions a voice would come on and say “go thirty feet and make a legal u-turn.”  When I ignored that directive, she would tell me “go 1 mile and make a legal u-turn.”  When I ignored her again she told me, “if you are going to just ignore me I am not going to talk to you anymore.” She really didn’t say that but I kind of like the fact that she was warning me to make sure I performed a legal u-turn as opposed to an illegal one. 

Let Go of Regret & Be Different: One of the most important lessons I have learned is that I can choose to be happy and part of that comes from not living in the past.  If I am constantly looking back or turning around and going back to visit all of my regrets and all of the wrong things I have done in my life, I will never be happy like God wants me to be.  I cannot change the things I have already done so it is counterproductive to keep visiting those things I regret.  The thing I can do is to be different than I was in the past.  

I’ve Always Done It That Way:  Have you noticed that life is constantly changing around us every day?  If we know that everything is constantly changing we need to adapt.  Sometimes the very things that are changing around us are for our own good.  If God is doing the changing in us, then we know they are for our own good and we can trust that He knows what is best for us and adapt to those changes.

Forgiveness: Are you holding onto resentment and anger because someone hurt you in the past?  Forgive that person and move on.  Does the other person deserve forgiveness?  No.  But do we deserve what Jesus did for us by dying on a cross for the weight of our sins?  No.  So focus your life on Him, forgive, and move forward and away from the hurt, anger and resentment.  Happiness will be your reward if you forgive and move on. 

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, when I take my eyes off of You and return to my past regrets I lose.  I don’t deserve what Jesus did for me.  How can I hold something against someone else when I don’t deserve Your forgiveness.  If I keep my focus on an eternal life with You, then the things going on in my life now will become insignificant in comparison to what I have to look forward to.  Help me to be different.   

Scripture: Pressing Toward the Goal

Not that I have already attained, or am already perfected; but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me. Brethren, I do not count myself to have apprehended; but one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore let us, as many as are mature, have this mind; and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal even this to you. Nevertheless, to the degree that we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us be of the same mind. Philippians 3:12-16

Excess 

Prayer can never be in excess.  Charles Spurgeon

There are many things in life that can be taken to excess.  The following is a list of things that we often go to extreme measures to obtain and many of those excesses can lead to dire consequences.

Food is something that can be eaten to excess.  It can lead us to obesity, heart disease and any number of health issues yet we sometimes continue these excesses even if it ruins our health and shortens our life.

Alcohol can be taken to excess where it hinders our ability to make decisions.  You can take the example of former Cowboys player Josh Brent as a life that has forever been changed.  He drove while intoxicated, wrecked his car and killed his best friend.

Money and the accumulation of and the lack of it can do as much harm as any other excess on earth.  It can lead to greed and selfishness or lead to the opposite extreme of using any means possible to obtain it, whether it is cheating, stealing or even killing for it. 

Drugs are another excess that can lead people to do things they would never think of otherwise.  How many people’s lives were ruined by drugs because they thought they would not become addicted?  You can look at the number of actors in Hollywood who thought that very thing and lost their lives in the process.  

If you think about the things in this list, each one, in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing.  It is the use of them that can be fatal.  If we think we are strong enough to withstand any one of these we are fooling ourselves.  Satan intends for us to fail and he has a lot of ammunition doesn’t he?  We often make it easy for him to bring us down. 

I started thinking about what is there on earth that would be something that it would be good for us to be addicted to.  The only answer I could come up with is prayer.  Prayer is the one thing that we can use to fight all the other addictions.  It is the most powerful antidote around and we don’t use it often enough.  When God tells us to pray without ceasing, he means “all the time”.  Not just before a meal or Sunday at church.  That means every minute of every day we should be praying. When we pray without ceasing it fills our mind and keeps the wrong things from getting in. 

One of the things I have learned to do is any time I reach an obstacle in life, I stop everything I am doing and pray.  It doesn’t have to be an eloquent, lengthy prayer.  One of the ones I use often is “Father help me”.  Here is another one.  “Father I need You.”  God knows all the words in the dictionary so you are not going to impress him with your amazing grasp of the English language.  The shortest verse in the Bible is “Jesus wept.”  I know God heard Jesus on that day long ago and He will hear our cries as well.

When you feel like you have reached the end of your capacity to handle what life is throwing at you, do some deep knee bends.  God is waiting and listening and He loves us beyond anything we can ever comprehend.

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, I am guilty of using things in this life in excess. You created me in your image and sometimes I don’t glorify You when I use things in this life to excess.  Help me to overcome the addictions of this world and turn to you for everything.  You will not fail me and I praise You for Your love for me.    

        

Scripture: Now, brothers and sisters, about times and dates we do not need to write to you, for you know very well that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. While people are saying, “Peace and safety,” destruction will come on them suddenly, as labor pains on a pregnant woman, and they will not escape.

But you, brothers and sisters, are not in darkness so that this day should surprise you like a thief. You are all children of the light and children of the day. We do not belong to the night or to the darkness. So then, let us not be like others, who are asleep, but let us be awake and sober. For those who sleep, sleep at night, and those who get drunk, get drunk at night. But since we belong to the day, let us be sober, putting on faith and love as a breastplate, and the hope of salvation as a helmet. For God did not appoint us to suffer wrath but to receive salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He died for us so that, whether we are awake or asleep, we may live together with him. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.

Now we ask you, brothers and sisters, to acknowledge those who work hard among you, who care for you in the Lord and who admonish you. Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work. Live in peace with each other. And we urge you, brothers and sisters, warn those who are idle and disruptive, encourage the disheartened, help the weak, be patient with everyone. Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always strive to do what is good for each other and for everyone else.

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.

May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.

Brothers and sisters, pray for us. Greet all God’s people with a holy kiss. I charge you before the Lord to have this letter read to all the brothers and sisters.

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you.  1 Thessalonians 5:1-28

Logins & Passwords    

If sheep do not have the constant care of a shepherd, they will go the wrong way, unaware of the dangers at hand. They have been known to nibble themselves right off the side of a mountain. And so, because sheep are sheep, they need shepherds to care for them. The welfare of sheep depends solely upon the care they get from their shepherd. Therefore, the better the shepherd, the healthier the sheep.  Kay Arthur

My husband decided he wanted to become technologically savvy so he asked me to help him get set up with online banking so he could pay our credit card bill online.  You all know from a previous devotional what a techie I am so I proceeded to go online and try to set him up.  You notice I said “try”. 

It went kind of like this.  My husband thought he might have tried to set this up previously so I started by trying to log him in.  Of course he didn’t remember his password or login since he hadn’t logged in since 2003, so I clicked on the button that said “Forgot my login ID”.  So it then asks for an email address.  So I enter that and then it asks several questions to try to identify if we are who we say we are.  You know, the make of your mother’s first car, your paternal grandfather’s cousin’s name, your Dad’s brother’s first job, your first grade teacher’s name, your wife’s mother’s middle name, the address of your first house, which grocery store you shop at and where you went on vacation in 1975.  Here’s the kicker.  When they ask about what car you drove in high school does this mean make or model and don’t you just love it when they only give you one wrong answer before they lock you out of your account?   

So we finally get the login ID but then we have to get the password reset.  It then gave us an error message that said they could not reset it and we would have to call them instead.  I guess they were laughing at our attempts to access our account.  So after we went through the same questions over the phone again we finally had our password and were ready to go, or so we thought. 

We log into the account and we were actually able to see the credit card statement and it had a little button in the corner that said, “Pay Bill Online”.  Since that was our whole reason for doing this in the first place I clicked on the button.  It took me to another screen that told me all about Bill Pay and when I clicked on the button on that screen and it gave me an error message that said Bill Pay is currently not available to you at this time.  We are working on it.  What does that mean?  My husband being the comedian in the family said “by the time I get this paid it will be past due.”

We worked on this for over an hour and finally I told Jerry he would just have to call them and pay over the phone.  When he called the first thing that came up was a survey and it didn’t give him an option to skip the survey so he had to complete that first. I could hear him in the kitchen mumbling about dumb surveys and banks and stupidity.  I only caught snatches of the conversation he had with himself as he completed the survey.

Have you ever wondered what we did before technology?  I am starting to think that being a shepherd has its benefits.   I mean herding sheep is sounding better and better every day.  What better way to spend our time than with God.   If I didn’t have to spend so much time trying to remember logins and passwords and completing surveys I could spend a lot more time with our Heavenly Father.  Money under the mattress is sounding better and better every day.   

  

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, we spent an inordinate amount of time this weekend online and on the phone trying to pay one bill.  I would have preferred to spend it with You. Help me to remember why I am here on earth and that so many of the things we do every day are manmade distractions.  Remind me of what is really important.  You.    

Scripture:  Make a joyful shout to the Lord, all you lands! Serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing.  Know that the Lord, He is God; it is He who has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people and the sheep of His pasture. Enter into His gates with thanksgiving, and into His courts with praise. Be thankful to Him, and bless His name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations.  Psalm 100:1-5 

Aging Gracefully

Within each of us exists the image of God, however disfigured and corrupted by sin it may presently be. God is able to recover this image through grace as we are conformed to Christ.  Alister McGrath

The law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes along and straightens me out.  D.L. Moody

All of us have heard the terminology about aging gracefully.  I think we have a misconception about what it means to age gracefully.  The world sees aging gracefully from the perspective that if our eyes get laugh lines and our neck begins to resemble the forehead of a Shar Pei, we are not aging gracefully.  Why do we place so much importance on outer appearance instead of what is inside?  Society places an inordinate amount of importance on defying gravity and looking younger than we really are, but for what purpose? 

I was looking through a magazine this weekend and I saw a famous newscaster.   The problem was I didn’t recognize her.  I had to read the fine print to figure out who she was and she is not the only one.  How many actors, sports figures and other famous people don’t even resemble the person they were 20 years ago.  You see them all the time.  Their eyes resemble a deer in headlights with a perpetual surprised look on their faces. 

Some of the most beautiful people I have known in my lifetime were not wrinkle free.    Every wrinkle on my face should tell a story.  There are the wrinkles from surviving cancer, the wrinkles of laughing with my niece and nephews and the wrinkles of worrying about loved ones and just plain old stress wrinkles.  Each wrinkle is a badge of courage.  Some wrinkles are of our own making.  Smoking, alcohol and hard living can bring on the wrinkles too. 

When I think of aging, I think about God’s grace. Graceful aging should be the terminology we use.  God gave us unmerited or unearned grace so that we could live.  He didn’t intend for us to try to look the same age as we were when we were twenty.  When we decide to live for God we no longer need to worry about what others think of our wrinkled face.  

Prayer for the Day: Heavenly Father, we often get caught up in the worldly habit of trying to look young.  I have started to see my wrinkles differently.  If I look at them from Your perspective, there will be times of suffering and times of great sorrow.  Age and gravity will pull at my face but if I look at my wrinkles from the standpoint that many of these signs of aging were wrought from trials that made me love You more, how can I not appreciate each tiny crease and fold.  

Scripture:  Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation.  Romans 5:1-11