2015
January
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? by Cynthia Saladin
Pay Attention by Cynthia Saladin
February
How Fast Are You Running? by Bill Rollins
Alice by Diane Kleeschulte
Seeds by Cynthia Saladin
March
Holiness by Bill Rollins
Over, Under, or Around by Cynthia Saladin
My Cousin's Tapeworm by Bill Stough
April
A Tale of Three Captains by Bill Stough
A Prayer - anonymous
An Invitation by Sally Rollins
In Remembrance by Sally Rollins
A Prayer - anonymous
May
Life After Delivery (from cybersalt.org)
Commanded to Count by Cynthia Saladin
Joy Jar (collected on the internet)
June
The Start of Something New by Patricia Manning
Of To-Do Lists and Sundry Plans by Cynthia Saladin
July
Mining for Gold by Cynthia Saladin
The Hereafter by Cynthia Saladin
August
God's Purpose for Mankind by Jerry Laws
Floating! by Cynthia Saladin
Enough by Cynthia Saladin
A Stony Heart by Cynthia Saladin
September/October
All Things Are Ready - Come to the Feast! by Cynthia Saladin
Isaiah's Prophecy of Messiah's Birth by Bill Rollins
Change by Cynthia Saladin
November
By Faith by Cynthia Saladin
December
Fear or Faith in God by Cynthia Saladin
Gratefulness!! by Cynthia Saladin
January
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road? by Cynthia Saladin
Pay Attention by Cynthia Saladin
February
How Fast Are You Running? by Bill Rollins
Alice by Diane Kleeschulte
Seeds by Cynthia Saladin
March
Holiness by Bill Rollins
Over, Under, or Around by Cynthia Saladin
My Cousin's Tapeworm by Bill Stough
April
A Tale of Three Captains by Bill Stough
A Prayer - anonymous
An Invitation by Sally Rollins
In Remembrance by Sally Rollins
A Prayer - anonymous
May
Life After Delivery (from cybersalt.org)
Commanded to Count by Cynthia Saladin
Joy Jar (collected on the internet)
June
The Start of Something New by Patricia Manning
Of To-Do Lists and Sundry Plans by Cynthia Saladin
July
Mining for Gold by Cynthia Saladin
The Hereafter by Cynthia Saladin
August
God's Purpose for Mankind by Jerry Laws
Floating! by Cynthia Saladin
Enough by Cynthia Saladin
A Stony Heart by Cynthia Saladin
September/October
All Things Are Ready - Come to the Feast! by Cynthia Saladin
Isaiah's Prophecy of Messiah's Birth by Bill Rollins
Change by Cynthia Saladin
November
By Faith by Cynthia Saladin
December
Fear or Faith in God by Cynthia Saladin
Gratefulness!! by Cynthia Saladin
January 2015
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
by Cynthia Saladin
Christopher and I were on the way to his orthodontist appointment when I caught the movement of a critter scurrying across the road. To my amazement and amusement, it was a chicken! Now, I’ve seen a lot of critters scurrying across the road in my day: turkeys, pheasants, dogs, cats, deer, cows (o.k. maybe not exactly scurrying, in that case), mice, even snakes. But to my recollection, I’ve never before seen a chicken scurrying across the road! I knew it was going to be a good day. How could it not be? It started in such a fun way!
Sometimes, especially this time of year, there’s a pull towards depression. The days are short and often cloudy. Their dreariness and coldness only intensify the feelings of impending doom and hopelessness. So God sends us pieces of encouragement along the way - if we remember to look to Him for our strength and comfort.
We’ve been reading through the psalms. What a great place for reminding us to look to God for strength and comfort! The dependence of the psalmist upon God resounds through these verses. “Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:5, 11; 43:5, ESV). Yes, we’re feeling overwhelmed and threatened. Perhaps we’re feeling gloom and despair. But God is still there, and He’s holding us by the hand (Psalm 37:24).
It’s been raining a lot lately. I used to feel that the day was crying, and rainy days and Mondays always bring me down. But my perspective of rainy days has changed. I’m so very glad to have the rain which waters the earth. The garden has been tilled; the moisture is sinking into the soil. I’m so very glad to have the rain.
The days are cold enough that I really don’t want to be outside working. That used to cause some anxiety and consternation. After all, there are mounds of mulch that are waiting to be spread around the blueberries, grapes, and fruit trees. There are trees to be trimmed. There is brush to eradicate. But instead of fretting about how much I’m not getting done outside, I focus on the inside jobs which have gotten pushed aside - for a rainy day, so to speak. Because I would rather not work outside, I have projects inside which have been calling my name, projects which will make life run more smoothly next summer when I’m again spending most of my days outside.
Some days it’s so cold, I just want to curl up next to the stove. What a blessing that is! We have plenty of wood and a fire which is a delight! So I take advantage of some slower days to enjoy the fruit of laboring to cut and carry the firewood to the house. And, as I’m soaking up the heat like a cat, I enjoy knowing that the colder the temperatures, the fewer bugs will be in my garden next summer.
The dogs also get more attention in the winter. They curl up next to the fire with us and add to the conversation occasionally. Velvet “talks” and uses the front door as a revolving door and the family as doormen. She keeps us busy, and she’s so happy doing it.
And sometimes, God provides a special treat for us to enjoy: frost, lightly falling snow, brilliant stars in a clear night sky, or even chickens crossing the road. So why did the chicken cross the road? Just to make me smile.
Do not trust atoms. They make up everything.
Pay Attention by Cynthia Saladin
How observant are you? When someone in the house moves the couch 90º from its former position, do you notice? Are you aware of lightbulbs out in the ceiling fan? Do you notice when your grandchildren put your birthday cards on the table next to your elbow? We all laugh at ourselves and at each other when we fail to notice something that is glaringly obvious to other people. And truly, moved couches, burned out lightbulbs, and birthday cards don’t rank very high on the list of things which must be noticed or else you’ll die. Nevertheless, it’s curious how we become so much less observant of so many things as we age.
Parents of small children get to experience the world anew through the eyes of their children. It’s delightful to see their amazement, shock, and surprise at things like bubble wrap and balls, puppies and towers of blocks. The first taste of real food (other than Mom’s milk) can cause facial expressions which the parents will never forget! In a way many people would never consider, babies and toddlers are an incredible blessing to parents; they remind us how amazing our world is. In doing so, they remind us to become more observant.
How did we go from seeing everything (Remember when you first saw a baby madly crawling for the spider across the room?) to being so preoccupied that we don’t notice when major pieces of furniture are moved?
As we mature, our involvement with our world also changes. We are overwhelmed with things to see, things to do, things to taste. We have to, out of self-preservation, learn to focus our attention on whatever we’re doing at the time. If we can’t focus, we find ourselves frustrated at not being able to accomplish a task which really does require all of our attention. But when that job is done, we’re already thinking of the next job - focusing on it. We become accustomed to things around us; they aren’t a danger and they don’t need our immediate attention. So unless something squeaks, we ignore it.
We become so consumed with what impacts us that we instantly evaluate if something matters to us. Is it dangerous? Does it matter to me? If it doesn’t, we ignore it.
Now you know, tragic consequences result from not paying attention: car accidents, chainsaw accidents, etc. These are the ones which are immediate and obvious. We don’t miss these consequences. Yet just as tragic are the consequences of being unobservant in our relationships with those around us. When we don’t notice how upset someone is, they notice our lack of attention. When we don’t look at them when they’re speaking, they get a return message loud and clear, “I don’t care what you have to say. It doesn’t matter to me.” When we ignore relationships, they - like ignored teeth - will go away. They require attention if they’re going to thrive.
Extrapolate this out to your relationship with God. The new believer often exhibits a childlike wonder when God opens their eyes to see who He is. They zealously share what they’ve seen with everyone who will listen. Then time, the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches tend to dim the zeal and distract the Christian from exulting in our God with the same fervent worship. We must be diligent to be wholly devoted to the Almighty.
I was struck by Addison Road’s song “What Do I Know of Holy” this past week. She sings,
“I guess I thought that I had figured You out.
I knew all the stories, and I learned to talked about
how You were mighty to save.
Those were only empty words on a page.
Then I caught a glimpse of who You might be.
The slightest hint of You brought me down to my knees.”
I don’t want to be so caught up in doing things a Christian should do that I lose my wonder at how great our God is. I want to be very aware of Him working in my life. I want to pay attention to the creation around me that shouts His glory. I want to be awe-struck and delighted when He shows me a glimpse of Himself. I want to pay attention.
Did Noah keep his bees in archives?
How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Why Did the Chicken Cross the Road?
by Cynthia Saladin
Christopher and I were on the way to his orthodontist appointment when I caught the movement of a critter scurrying across the road. To my amazement and amusement, it was a chicken! Now, I’ve seen a lot of critters scurrying across the road in my day: turkeys, pheasants, dogs, cats, deer, cows (o.k. maybe not exactly scurrying, in that case), mice, even snakes. But to my recollection, I’ve never before seen a chicken scurrying across the road! I knew it was going to be a good day. How could it not be? It started in such a fun way!
Sometimes, especially this time of year, there’s a pull towards depression. The days are short and often cloudy. Their dreariness and coldness only intensify the feelings of impending doom and hopelessness. So God sends us pieces of encouragement along the way - if we remember to look to Him for our strength and comfort.
We’ve been reading through the psalms. What a great place for reminding us to look to God for strength and comfort! The dependence of the psalmist upon God resounds through these verses. “Why are you downcast, O my soul, and why are you in turmoil within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God” (Psalm 42:5, 11; 43:5, ESV). Yes, we’re feeling overwhelmed and threatened. Perhaps we’re feeling gloom and despair. But God is still there, and He’s holding us by the hand (Psalm 37:24).
It’s been raining a lot lately. I used to feel that the day was crying, and rainy days and Mondays always bring me down. But my perspective of rainy days has changed. I’m so very glad to have the rain which waters the earth. The garden has been tilled; the moisture is sinking into the soil. I’m so very glad to have the rain.
The days are cold enough that I really don’t want to be outside working. That used to cause some anxiety and consternation. After all, there are mounds of mulch that are waiting to be spread around the blueberries, grapes, and fruit trees. There are trees to be trimmed. There is brush to eradicate. But instead of fretting about how much I’m not getting done outside, I focus on the inside jobs which have gotten pushed aside - for a rainy day, so to speak. Because I would rather not work outside, I have projects inside which have been calling my name, projects which will make life run more smoothly next summer when I’m again spending most of my days outside.
Some days it’s so cold, I just want to curl up next to the stove. What a blessing that is! We have plenty of wood and a fire which is a delight! So I take advantage of some slower days to enjoy the fruit of laboring to cut and carry the firewood to the house. And, as I’m soaking up the heat like a cat, I enjoy knowing that the colder the temperatures, the fewer bugs will be in my garden next summer.
The dogs also get more attention in the winter. They curl up next to the fire with us and add to the conversation occasionally. Velvet “talks” and uses the front door as a revolving door and the family as doormen. She keeps us busy, and she’s so happy doing it.
And sometimes, God provides a special treat for us to enjoy: frost, lightly falling snow, brilliant stars in a clear night sky, or even chickens crossing the road. So why did the chicken cross the road? Just to make me smile.
Do not trust atoms. They make up everything.
Pay Attention by Cynthia Saladin
How observant are you? When someone in the house moves the couch 90º from its former position, do you notice? Are you aware of lightbulbs out in the ceiling fan? Do you notice when your grandchildren put your birthday cards on the table next to your elbow? We all laugh at ourselves and at each other when we fail to notice something that is glaringly obvious to other people. And truly, moved couches, burned out lightbulbs, and birthday cards don’t rank very high on the list of things which must be noticed or else you’ll die. Nevertheless, it’s curious how we become so much less observant of so many things as we age.
Parents of small children get to experience the world anew through the eyes of their children. It’s delightful to see their amazement, shock, and surprise at things like bubble wrap and balls, puppies and towers of blocks. The first taste of real food (other than Mom’s milk) can cause facial expressions which the parents will never forget! In a way many people would never consider, babies and toddlers are an incredible blessing to parents; they remind us how amazing our world is. In doing so, they remind us to become more observant.
How did we go from seeing everything (Remember when you first saw a baby madly crawling for the spider across the room?) to being so preoccupied that we don’t notice when major pieces of furniture are moved?
As we mature, our involvement with our world also changes. We are overwhelmed with things to see, things to do, things to taste. We have to, out of self-preservation, learn to focus our attention on whatever we’re doing at the time. If we can’t focus, we find ourselves frustrated at not being able to accomplish a task which really does require all of our attention. But when that job is done, we’re already thinking of the next job - focusing on it. We become accustomed to things around us; they aren’t a danger and they don’t need our immediate attention. So unless something squeaks, we ignore it.
We become so consumed with what impacts us that we instantly evaluate if something matters to us. Is it dangerous? Does it matter to me? If it doesn’t, we ignore it.
Now you know, tragic consequences result from not paying attention: car accidents, chainsaw accidents, etc. These are the ones which are immediate and obvious. We don’t miss these consequences. Yet just as tragic are the consequences of being unobservant in our relationships with those around us. When we don’t notice how upset someone is, they notice our lack of attention. When we don’t look at them when they’re speaking, they get a return message loud and clear, “I don’t care what you have to say. It doesn’t matter to me.” When we ignore relationships, they - like ignored teeth - will go away. They require attention if they’re going to thrive.
Extrapolate this out to your relationship with God. The new believer often exhibits a childlike wonder when God opens their eyes to see who He is. They zealously share what they’ve seen with everyone who will listen. Then time, the cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches tend to dim the zeal and distract the Christian from exulting in our God with the same fervent worship. We must be diligent to be wholly devoted to the Almighty.
I was struck by Addison Road’s song “What Do I Know of Holy” this past week. She sings,
“I guess I thought that I had figured You out.
I knew all the stories, and I learned to talked about
how You were mighty to save.
Those were only empty words on a page.
Then I caught a glimpse of who You might be.
The slightest hint of You brought me down to my knees.”
I don’t want to be so caught up in doing things a Christian should do that I lose my wonder at how great our God is. I want to be very aware of Him working in my life. I want to pay attention to the creation around me that shouts His glory. I want to be awe-struck and delighted when He shows me a glimpse of Himself. I want to pay attention.
Did Noah keep his bees in archives?
How is it one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
February 2015
How Fast Are You Running?
by Bill Rollins
Some time ago, a man of many thoughts said, “In this world of ours, it takes a lot of running just to stay in the same place.” Oh how true this is as we take a look around us and see the hectic pace of this society. I don’t think I have to enumerate the many ways in which we may find our acquaintances and neighbors rushing around.
And yet, how about you? How fast are you running?
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to sit with a brother who was bothered by many things. He is he type who will ask a question and before an answer can be fully given, three more questions are off his tongue, through his lips and into my ear! I started to become frustrated because it was hard to help him with anything while he was “running” so fast. His real problem was that he did not want to rest in the Messiah (or should I say he did not know how to rest).
You, yes, you, how fast are you running?
Stop!
“Here is what the Sovereign Eternal, the Holy One of Israel, says, ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength . . .’ ” (Isaiah 30:15)
My brothers and sisters in Messiah, you who are much loved by your Father in Heaven, STOP! Just stop!
Can you afford just one hour? Jesus asked His disciples in the garden, “Could you not keep watch one hour?” It is not a very long period of time in your life and you need to take one hour. You need to find solitude from all the “things” in this world, clear your mind from all distractions and spend one dedicated hour with your Father.
Put your hand in His and let Him lead you into a tender and gentle embrace. Have Him hold you in His arms and then talk to Him about who you are. Do you know who you are? If not, then tell Him so, and ask, “Rather, show me to myself as You see me.” This is a huge step, but remember, He will not put upon you more than you are capable of handling.
Yes, beloved of your Father, this is all about having Him search your heart in a very loving, one-on-one encounter - and encounter with God! Wow!
Are you too busy this winter? Too busy to take time? Too busy to find one day to fast and pray? Whoa! I thought we were talking about one hour; who said anything about taking a whole day?
I’m sorry; I just assumed one hour would be so sweet that you might want to spend two hours And if two, then possibly three, and if three . . .!!!
The possibility is: God will be enjoying the time much more than you are. Let us be found pleasing in His sight.
Cat T-Shirts
If cats wore t-shirts, here is what they might say:
Alice
by Diane Kleeschulte
Maybe you’ve met an Alice but I’m certain that you’ve not met my Alice. She and her husband live with their children in the Ritenour School District. Times have been rough the past couple of years. Her husband was incarcerated for a while because as Alice puts it “he made a bad decision and had to pay the consequences”. I didn’t want to know what kind of bad decision he made and she didn’t offer any other information except to let me know the countdown to his release.
A couple of days might go by before Alice and I have the opportunity to talk. Sometimes we have more than just a few minutes to visit as was the case a couple of weeks ago.
Alice and I were sharing a couple of snippets of our life, you know- family, weather, jobs. After making a comment about neither of us feels comfortable when others try to pressure us to do something, Alice shared that she’s been getting pressure from her friends at church. It seems she and her husband had been, until recently, attending church regularly. Friends have been calling Alice, relentlessly,trying to woo her back to church and Alice is adamant she isn’t going to be “bullied” into attending church.
I didn’t have to wait long for Alice to tell me exactly how her no- shows at church came about: It seems it all came down to money and lack thereof for Alice and her family. She works full-time, her husband gets odd jobs here and there, but with a family of five, they live paycheck to paycheck. Alice explained that they tithed at church as much as they could afford but that wasn’t enough. How did she know it wasn’t enough? The preachers started, well, preaching that even 10% wasn’t enough to keep the church active and growing. Alice said she was put off by the designer suits and alligator shoes the preacher wore, the newest of cars he drove, and the degradation he imparted on the congregation for “holding back” what was God’s. She explained that she and her husband weren’t going to attend a church where they were demeaned and humiliated because of their financial situation. Alice said she’d feel like a hypocrite sitting there in church seething with bitterness and resentment towards the preacher, his staff, and even some of the congregation, who apparently either don’t care what the preacher is teaching or agree with him.
The reason she goes to church is to worship and praise the Lord. She doesn’t want to feel like she’s just “following the pack”.
Okay. Here is where I took a deep breath. Well, me being me, I started analyzing and processing- Alice needed to vent and share, and she trusted that I was going to be a good listener. I did my best. But still I wondered, is she expecting a response from me? I didn’t know. So I quickly sent up a prayer of help and wisdom, and not my words but His if any needed to be spoken. And, I was lead to say this: The bible is the word of God. Read the scriptures on tithing, for God does ask for a tithe of ten percent, and ask for wisdom in this area. The same for the situation regarding assembling with others for we are not to forsake the assembling with others but rather to lift one another up for encouragement. If you feel God is leading you away from that church, pray for His guidance to be lead to one that offers true and solid biblical teaching and responsibility, as well as worship and praise time.
Could I have said more? Maybe. However, they may have been my words and not His. In hindsight, I believe that is all the Lord really wanted or needed me to say. Alice acknowledged what I said and I offered to continue my prayers for her and the family. Before she left, she said it just really bothered her that she didn’t have that “anchor” of a church family that she felt she could depend on for love and understanding. Wow. I can’t even tell you how sad I felt after she said that. Cynthia and I just completed a study on 1 Corinthians 13. The love chapter. My eyes were opened and I mean wide-opened by Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church. If we do not love one another we have nothing- not wisdom, understanding, prophecy- nothing. All that we are called to do in His name whether it be serving or teaching, is all to be done first with love. The bottom line for Alice is that she didn’t feel loved. She didn’t have enough to give what was expected, but she gave what she had and she knew this wasn’t enough because the church family told her so. but was it said in love? According to Alice, no. And though Alice is not a widow, perhaps a reading of the woman and two mites would help us understand Alice’s situation more fully.
I am sharing Alice’s story for a couple of reasons and I’m sure you could figure them out as you were reading. One, there are people hurting out there in the world. They are striving hard to make it day to day. They love Christ. They want to worship and praise Him and the Father. They want a safe place. A place where they can learn more about how to live as Christians in a world that is in so many ways against all that they stand for and represent. When they are with their church family they want and need love. We are called to love. Not only the loveable or those we deem worthy. We are just called to love.
Second, Alice came to someone she felt was trustworthy. I cannot even express how humbling that was for me. Somehow I have conveyed to her that I am someone who is willing to listen, without partiality. I thanked God for such an opportunity. But, I believe Alice was lead to me for another reason. Was it just about church absences and tithing, for her? Or was it about a lesson of love, for me? Only He knows. However, not long after Alice and I had this discussion, Cynthia asked if I was interested in the study on 1 Corinthians 13. My conclusion was drawn and I am sure Alice’s visit was for my benefit as well.
Finally, love comes in many forms and expressions. The way we love others is personal, but what matters most is that it is expressed fully and from the heart. There are many scriptures on “loving one another”. John 13:34, is one, and it is in Jesus’ words:
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. (KJV)
My prayer is that we all continue to love one another first and foremost, as Jesus He has commanded us, and because of our love for Him: We love Him, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19 (KJV)
Alice hasn’t mentioned her church situation again and I haven’t been lead to ask her about it. But I continue to pray for her and others who are seeking a loving, bible- teaching church.
The five-second rule for food dropped on the ground doesn't work if you have a two-second dog.
Seeds
by Cynthia Saladin
Do you know what we got in the mail yesterday? Seeds! A couple of weeks ago, I had diligently, carefully selected the seeds I wanted for this year’s garden and sent the order in. Getting seed catalogs in the mail and sending off the order is an early indication that the winter is not going to last much longer; I’m already preparing for the next growing season.
Planting seeds is a rich object lesson. We plant the seeds in loose soil. We fertilize. We water. Nevertheless, we retain an awareness that it is God who causes them to grow.
Similarly, we come to church. We read our Bibles. We pray and try to get closer to our God, so that we will be equipped to plant the seeds of the gospel wherever He leads us to plant. We try to be discerning about our words. We are thoughtful and deliberate about our actions. Still, we retain an awareness that it is God who draws people to Himself. He brings them, and all of us, to repentance.
Think about the consequences of my choices. If I just buy my seeds from Dollar General, I’m not going to get the best harvest. Similarly, if I don’t prepare myself to speak God’s truth by zealously digging into God’s truth, then the words that I spread may not be as effective as they could otherwise have been. God has blessed us with an incredible opportunity to tell others about who He is and what He has done. There’s a fertile field out there ready to hear what we say and see what we do. That’s an awesome responsibility!
Furthermore, the task of being ambassadors for Christ cannot help but reverberate in our lives. Like planting the seeds in the garden, the action of spreading the gospel displays enormous trust and confident hope that God will bless the growth of the seeds. As we see His blessing, our faith and trust blooms too.
I love getting the seeds. They’re such a promise of what’s to come.
How Fast Are You Running?
by Bill Rollins
Some time ago, a man of many thoughts said, “In this world of ours, it takes a lot of running just to stay in the same place.” Oh how true this is as we take a look around us and see the hectic pace of this society. I don’t think I have to enumerate the many ways in which we may find our acquaintances and neighbors rushing around.
And yet, how about you? How fast are you running?
Not long ago, I had the opportunity to sit with a brother who was bothered by many things. He is he type who will ask a question and before an answer can be fully given, three more questions are off his tongue, through his lips and into my ear! I started to become frustrated because it was hard to help him with anything while he was “running” so fast. His real problem was that he did not want to rest in the Messiah (or should I say he did not know how to rest).
You, yes, you, how fast are you running?
Stop!
“Here is what the Sovereign Eternal, the Holy One of Israel, says, ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength . . .’ ” (Isaiah 30:15)
My brothers and sisters in Messiah, you who are much loved by your Father in Heaven, STOP! Just stop!
Can you afford just one hour? Jesus asked His disciples in the garden, “Could you not keep watch one hour?” It is not a very long period of time in your life and you need to take one hour. You need to find solitude from all the “things” in this world, clear your mind from all distractions and spend one dedicated hour with your Father.
Put your hand in His and let Him lead you into a tender and gentle embrace. Have Him hold you in His arms and then talk to Him about who you are. Do you know who you are? If not, then tell Him so, and ask, “Rather, show me to myself as You see me.” This is a huge step, but remember, He will not put upon you more than you are capable of handling.
Yes, beloved of your Father, this is all about having Him search your heart in a very loving, one-on-one encounter - and encounter with God! Wow!
Are you too busy this winter? Too busy to take time? Too busy to find one day to fast and pray? Whoa! I thought we were talking about one hour; who said anything about taking a whole day?
I’m sorry; I just assumed one hour would be so sweet that you might want to spend two hours And if two, then possibly three, and if three . . .!!!
The possibility is: God will be enjoying the time much more than you are. Let us be found pleasing in His sight.
Cat T-Shirts
If cats wore t-shirts, here is what they might say:
- "Purrfection cannot be improved"
- "If you don't like my attitude, you should see my cat"
- "Take my advice. I'm not using it."
- "I'd like to help you out. Which way did you come in?"
- "Cats know how we feel. They don't care, but they know."
- "Dogs have owners. Cats have staff."
- "Thousands of years ago, cats were worshiped as gods. They have never forgotten this.”
Alice
by Diane Kleeschulte
Maybe you’ve met an Alice but I’m certain that you’ve not met my Alice. She and her husband live with their children in the Ritenour School District. Times have been rough the past couple of years. Her husband was incarcerated for a while because as Alice puts it “he made a bad decision and had to pay the consequences”. I didn’t want to know what kind of bad decision he made and she didn’t offer any other information except to let me know the countdown to his release.
A couple of days might go by before Alice and I have the opportunity to talk. Sometimes we have more than just a few minutes to visit as was the case a couple of weeks ago.
Alice and I were sharing a couple of snippets of our life, you know- family, weather, jobs. After making a comment about neither of us feels comfortable when others try to pressure us to do something, Alice shared that she’s been getting pressure from her friends at church. It seems she and her husband had been, until recently, attending church regularly. Friends have been calling Alice, relentlessly,trying to woo her back to church and Alice is adamant she isn’t going to be “bullied” into attending church.
I didn’t have to wait long for Alice to tell me exactly how her no- shows at church came about: It seems it all came down to money and lack thereof for Alice and her family. She works full-time, her husband gets odd jobs here and there, but with a family of five, they live paycheck to paycheck. Alice explained that they tithed at church as much as they could afford but that wasn’t enough. How did she know it wasn’t enough? The preachers started, well, preaching that even 10% wasn’t enough to keep the church active and growing. Alice said she was put off by the designer suits and alligator shoes the preacher wore, the newest of cars he drove, and the degradation he imparted on the congregation for “holding back” what was God’s. She explained that she and her husband weren’t going to attend a church where they were demeaned and humiliated because of their financial situation. Alice said she’d feel like a hypocrite sitting there in church seething with bitterness and resentment towards the preacher, his staff, and even some of the congregation, who apparently either don’t care what the preacher is teaching or agree with him.
The reason she goes to church is to worship and praise the Lord. She doesn’t want to feel like she’s just “following the pack”.
Okay. Here is where I took a deep breath. Well, me being me, I started analyzing and processing- Alice needed to vent and share, and she trusted that I was going to be a good listener. I did my best. But still I wondered, is she expecting a response from me? I didn’t know. So I quickly sent up a prayer of help and wisdom, and not my words but His if any needed to be spoken. And, I was lead to say this: The bible is the word of God. Read the scriptures on tithing, for God does ask for a tithe of ten percent, and ask for wisdom in this area. The same for the situation regarding assembling with others for we are not to forsake the assembling with others but rather to lift one another up for encouragement. If you feel God is leading you away from that church, pray for His guidance to be lead to one that offers true and solid biblical teaching and responsibility, as well as worship and praise time.
Could I have said more? Maybe. However, they may have been my words and not His. In hindsight, I believe that is all the Lord really wanted or needed me to say. Alice acknowledged what I said and I offered to continue my prayers for her and the family. Before she left, she said it just really bothered her that she didn’t have that “anchor” of a church family that she felt she could depend on for love and understanding. Wow. I can’t even tell you how sad I felt after she said that. Cynthia and I just completed a study on 1 Corinthians 13. The love chapter. My eyes were opened and I mean wide-opened by Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church. If we do not love one another we have nothing- not wisdom, understanding, prophecy- nothing. All that we are called to do in His name whether it be serving or teaching, is all to be done first with love. The bottom line for Alice is that she didn’t feel loved. She didn’t have enough to give what was expected, but she gave what she had and she knew this wasn’t enough because the church family told her so. but was it said in love? According to Alice, no. And though Alice is not a widow, perhaps a reading of the woman and two mites would help us understand Alice’s situation more fully.
I am sharing Alice’s story for a couple of reasons and I’m sure you could figure them out as you were reading. One, there are people hurting out there in the world. They are striving hard to make it day to day. They love Christ. They want to worship and praise Him and the Father. They want a safe place. A place where they can learn more about how to live as Christians in a world that is in so many ways against all that they stand for and represent. When they are with their church family they want and need love. We are called to love. Not only the loveable or those we deem worthy. We are just called to love.
Second, Alice came to someone she felt was trustworthy. I cannot even express how humbling that was for me. Somehow I have conveyed to her that I am someone who is willing to listen, without partiality. I thanked God for such an opportunity. But, I believe Alice was lead to me for another reason. Was it just about church absences and tithing, for her? Or was it about a lesson of love, for me? Only He knows. However, not long after Alice and I had this discussion, Cynthia asked if I was interested in the study on 1 Corinthians 13. My conclusion was drawn and I am sure Alice’s visit was for my benefit as well.
Finally, love comes in many forms and expressions. The way we love others is personal, but what matters most is that it is expressed fully and from the heart. There are many scriptures on “loving one another”. John 13:34, is one, and it is in Jesus’ words:
A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. (KJV)
My prayer is that we all continue to love one another first and foremost, as Jesus He has commanded us, and because of our love for Him: We love Him, because He first loved us. 1 John 4:19 (KJV)
Alice hasn’t mentioned her church situation again and I haven’t been lead to ask her about it. But I continue to pray for her and others who are seeking a loving, bible- teaching church.
The five-second rule for food dropped on the ground doesn't work if you have a two-second dog.
Seeds
by Cynthia Saladin
Do you know what we got in the mail yesterday? Seeds! A couple of weeks ago, I had diligently, carefully selected the seeds I wanted for this year’s garden and sent the order in. Getting seed catalogs in the mail and sending off the order is an early indication that the winter is not going to last much longer; I’m already preparing for the next growing season.
Planting seeds is a rich object lesson. We plant the seeds in loose soil. We fertilize. We water. Nevertheless, we retain an awareness that it is God who causes them to grow.
Similarly, we come to church. We read our Bibles. We pray and try to get closer to our God, so that we will be equipped to plant the seeds of the gospel wherever He leads us to plant. We try to be discerning about our words. We are thoughtful and deliberate about our actions. Still, we retain an awareness that it is God who draws people to Himself. He brings them, and all of us, to repentance.
Think about the consequences of my choices. If I just buy my seeds from Dollar General, I’m not going to get the best harvest. Similarly, if I don’t prepare myself to speak God’s truth by zealously digging into God’s truth, then the words that I spread may not be as effective as they could otherwise have been. God has blessed us with an incredible opportunity to tell others about who He is and what He has done. There’s a fertile field out there ready to hear what we say and see what we do. That’s an awesome responsibility!
Furthermore, the task of being ambassadors for Christ cannot help but reverberate in our lives. Like planting the seeds in the garden, the action of spreading the gospel displays enormous trust and confident hope that God will bless the growth of the seeds. As we see His blessing, our faith and trust blooms too.
I love getting the seeds. They’re such a promise of what’s to come.
March 2015
Holiness
by Bill Rollins
It might be said that the topic of the book of Leviticus is “holiness.” From the sacrifices, to the ordination of the Priests, to the chapter about clean foods (where God tells us that we are not to eat unclean food because we are holy), we find instructions concerning holiness - in the laws of cleanliness, holy days, holy years, and then, too, in chapters 19-21, we are told seven times to “be holy because the Eternal is holy.” But it is near the end of the last chapter of the book that we find a most remarkable statement about holiness. “But nothing that a man owns and devotes to the LORD - whether man or animal or family land - may be sold or redeemed; everything so devoted is most holy to the LORD. No person so devoted may be ransomed; he must be put to death” Leviticus 27:28. (emphasis mine)
The word “devote” (used three times in this passage) is a very curious word. It is the Hebrew word charm (Strong’s #2763), and it means “to devote, dedicate, to utterly destroy; the wholly giving over of something or someone to the Eternal often by totally destroying them.” This word is used to describe what Israel was to do to the cities that they would encounter in the land that God was given them. In Joshua 6:20, “When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted [emphasis mine] the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.”
I guess the thing that gets me to thinking is the fact that we have devoted ourselves to God and we are most holy to the Eternal. Nothing that existed in Jericho was to be kept - all was devoted to destruction to God! The connection here is unmistakable. We have a “self life” that underwent the waters of baptism and must be charm to God. This concept is of utmost importance, Brethren.
The wholly giving over of oneself to God is of genuine importance if we are to fellowship with the Father and His Son. Perhaps this concept is not something that is very well understood by God’s people, and yet it needs to be!
What do I gain by hanging onto any part of self? What is there about me that I do not want to “wholly give over” to the Eternal? And furthermore, why do I want to keep anything of this “self life”?
I believe that there is no way for me to “control” the old man, and so the only way to deal with the unruly child is to put him to death (Deut 21:18-21). The death of the old man is a painful thing and can even be a morbid subject. Why talk of death when the whole idea of the Bible is to bring life - “I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly.”
And we know Jesus Christ is our life.
Let me explain. Paul, in Galatians 5, states, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” We were brought out of bondage to the slavery to sin by the death of our Savior. This we understand from the symbolism of the children of Israel being brought out of bondage to the Egyptians. Once brought out they were no longer in Egypt!! We are no longer in bondage to this world and its sinful ways! Oh, but the Israelites complained that their lives were better in Egypt. They traveled only three days from the Red Sea when they grumbled about having nothing to drink. They traveled only one month when they said, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” It was less than three months when, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, the people said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
Just as they were not in bondage to Egypt and Pharaoh, we who accept the Messiah are not in bondage to the world, to sin, or to Satan. But just as they, many times, craved the things they left behind and the sins they indulged in in Egypt, so we commit sin. Plain and simple!
The ties to our heritage in Adam have been broken - our position is now in Messiah. But oh, how that old self life sometimes desires what it left and so it must be “charam,” wholly given over to God, devoted to God, totally destroyed - remember the definition given for the word charm: to devote, dedicate, to utterly destroy, the wholly giving over of something or someone to the Eternal - often by totally destroying.
Oh, how we shudder at the killings that the Israelites were to inflict upon those occupying the land. “When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations - the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations large and stronger than you - and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy” (Deut 7:1). The wording here “destroy them totally” is the word charm.
We flinch at the concept placed before us here, but we must remember that Paul said, “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages had come” (I Cor 10:11). And we can not flinch at what this means to us upon who the ends of the ages have come.
So, how do we totally destroy the self life? God has provided the Way! The Messiah has set us free from our past life of sins and from our connection to the lineage of Adam. We now belong to our Savior. We now find our life in Him! In one manner of speaking, He has given us His history (sinless) and He has taken upon Himself our history (sinful). But we cannot carry through on what He has imparted to us, and so we continue to sin. It seems as though the more we try to put sin out of our ives, there we try to live a sinless life, the more and more we see sin rearing its ugly head in our lives!
Remember how we started this article? We began with a quote from Leviticus 27:28: “Everything so devoted [to the Eternal] is most holy to the Eternal. No person so devoted may be ransomed, he must be put to death.” We talked of what we truly want - and that is life, and life more abundantly. But we also said that resurrection must precede life and death must precede resurrection. The self life must be put to death. God has provided a way.
If, in any system, the things which are essential to that system are denied, its demise is soon to follow. For example, if we neglect to put oil in our automobile's crankcase, the car will quit running. It will die. If a fireplace does not receive wood at regular intervals, it will go out. The fire will die.
So it is in the system of our “self life.” If it is denied, if it is neglected, if our vanity and pride are not fed, it will die. And Jesus, in all three of the gospels quoted above, tells us just what it is that goes along with the denial of self: it is taking up the cross! The cross is, of course, an implement of death. It was for our Savior, and it will be for our self life.
Remember this, my brothers and sisters! We have been freed from bondage to sin. Paul tells us in Romans 6:2, “We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?” We are free from anger, free to not become offended, free from bondage to lust, free from malicious talk. We are free to love, free to be patient, free to have joy, peace, goodness, free to be meek. And when we fall, we are free to call on a Savior “who speak to the Father in our defense” - Jesus the Righteous One (1 John 2:1).
And on top of it all, we have the cross of Christ we can use to deny self and thereby inflect death upon it. Galatians 6:14 - “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
Do you not know how to apply the cross to your self life? Go to your Savior. He knows all about it. He has gone through it. He desires to show you how it is done. Remember, He loved you enough to give His life for yours, to trade His history for yours, and He gave Himself up for the Church, “to make her holy, cleaning her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless . . .” And He feeds and cares for the church. He is in your corner - always wanting you to come through to the holiness and perfection that comes with self denial. He wants to show you how to apply the cross.
May the love of God and of His Son, Jesus the Messiah, be upon us all. Amen!
Over, Under, or Around
by Cynthia Saladin
A couple of weeks ago, Ron was sitting in front of the fire, with his legs propped up on the hearth. Ebony came up on his left side. I was sitting on his right side, having just thrown some more wood into the fire. Ebony is a very equal opportunity believing dog. Once Ron scratched her ears a little bit, she wanted to allow me the same privilege. She thought about climbing over Ron’s legs, but quickly decided it would be smarter to go under. She got low enough for it to almost qualify as an army crawl! We laughed and laughed! How easy would it have been to just walk a few extra inches to go around!!
I couldn’t help thinking of how we humans are much the same. We want to go from point A to point B. We see one path. That’s the path we take, without stopping to consider that there may be a better alternative. We have the carrot in front of us (getting her ears scratched, in Ebony’s case) and we are determined that nothing will prevent us from achieving our goal.
But experience is an effective teacher. When I tried to set up the situation again, wondering if perhaps Ebony would entertain the kids as she had Ron and me, Ebony had thought through the situation a little more and casually walked around the chair to get her “carrot.” Perhaps she was a little more awake. Perhaps she had had time to think it through a little more. Whatever the reason, Ebony chose a better path the second time around. We’re like that too. Having once attempted a task, we realize that perhaps there could be some beneficial modifications. Isn’t that why we see advertisements purporting “NEW and IMPROVED”? Isn’t that why Microsoft will soon be announcing their new version of 10.0? Isn’t that why, when we have done the same task over and over, we start thinking of ways to improve the quality of the task and the speed in which we can do it? And most of the time, our improvement ideas are truly beneficial modifications.
But not when it comes to keeping God’s law, living according to the Biblical standard. God tells us the way to live, to follow His commandments, to take up our cross daily and follow Him, to obey Him. And yet, mankind being the way it is, we sometimes think we can go over or under. We’re improving on what God has decreed. Except it doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as a better modification on what God has told us to do.
The “carrot” is there: a relationship with God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ, leading to eternal life. If we are in covenant with God, then, as God, He has the right to decree what is acceptable to Him. We don’t get to “improve” upon His commandments. We can’t decide God didn’t really mean it. We can’t say that God knows our heart and He’ll understand why we didn’t obey Him. There’s a way to live, a way to pursue holiness, and it’s not up to us to determine what that looks like. Think about it the next time you are tempted to go over or under or around God’s law.
My Cousin’s Tapeworm
by Bill Stough
When I was a child growing up, our family ate a lot of pork. I liked the taste of bacon and ham and ate a lot of it. When I learned about the laws of clean and unclean meats listed in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, there was sacrifice involved in giving up pork. Was that necessary, or were those only ceremonial laws which had a different purpose?
The standard argument that these laws were ceremonial goes something like this: Israel was to be a clean people spiritually. They were to set an example to all nations. To help them remember this purpose, God chose certain animals which would be clean and unclean. Each time a person ate, it would remind him that he should be spiritually clean before God and not be unclean as the gentiles were. But these were strictly ceremonial things and nothing was really physically wrong with any kind of meat.
Acts 10 is the most common scripture used to support the argument. However, verses 15 and 28 show that the purpose of Peter’s vision in this chapter was that God was now going to the gentiles and that Peter should not consider the people impure or unclean. But were the animals unclean?
Mary Ellen’s Example
I had a teenage cousin (Mary Ellen) in San Francisco, where I lived, who also liked pork. She started to lose weight and could never eat enough. What’s more, she felt something moving in her intestines! I will spare you the gruesome details but she found out she had a tapeworm inside her which ultimately turned out to be about 15 feet long. (Some get longer than that.)
Her doctor gave her medication and a special diet which caused her to pass that tapeworm. He also gave her a strong lecture about pork. He told her that pork can be a very dangerous meat and should never be eaten unless it was well done. Mary Ellen liked it rare. He said pork was far more likely to cause intestinal worms and other parasitic diseases than beef.
When I was a student at Lowell High School in San Francisco we ran an experiment in biology class. The teacher had us bring some meats from home and we examined them under microscopes. There was indeed a difference between beef and pork. We were finding pockets, or sacs, of wormlike creatures in the pork, but not in the beef. The teacher said these were cysts. These could develop into various kinds of parasitic diseases. He said it’s possible to get them in any meat, but it was pork that seemed to always have them. Indeed, none of us found cysts in our samples of beef.
The lesson he passed on to us was that we should always cook meat very well, especially pork. But it never occurred to any of us in his class to wonder if we should be eating well cooked worms and cysts.
Better Farming Methods?
Farmers used to go out and “slop the hogs.” They would feed them any kind of left over garbage and the hogs would eat it. Pigs seem to be natural garbage disposals. Such a practice would easily allow cysts in the garbage into the flesh of pigs. These animals could also get it from wallowing in feces. Then farmers would at some point slaughter those hogs and sell them to us for food. Legislation supposedly precludes such feeding practices today. What is the present day status of hog farming?
I spoke with hog farmer Todd Geisert, who owns a large pig farm near Washington, Missouri. Todd says he practices confinement farming. That is the practice of keeping his hogs penned up all their lives. It is also called factory farming. Todd says it is an economically profitable type of farming and requires less space. He does not “slop the hogs,” but feeds them grain.
Todd says he knows smaller operators who do “slop their hogs,” then sell the meat to stores. He knew of no laws that require feeding only certain types of food to hogs from which cysts could become part of their flesh. (Cysts can also enter the pigs from the feces in which they are perpetually wallowing, especially in confinement farming.) His reason for doing things as he does is economic. He is not a lawyer. He is a farmer. And what protections are there if meat is imported?
All meat is Safe?
I have two more examples from my own experiences. The first involves crab meat.
Crabs are bottom feeding creatures and apparently are natural garbage collectors, just as the pig is on land. My parents used to buy crab meat at the famous Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Crabs were cooked there by throwing whole live crabs into boiling water and letting them cook. My parents and sister liked crab meat, but I did not, so they did not make me eat it. That saved me from a violent food poisoning event on one occasion. Everyone but me became severely ill, and I will spare you the details of what that did to them. Crab is indeed an unclean animal. I’ve always thought of it as a sea spider. Most people won’t eat spiders, but think nothing of eating crabs.
My second example is from Union Meat Packing Company, of Union, Missouri. I formerly did service calls there on their electronically controlled equipment. I was an electronic technician and was self-employed. I kept noticing that some of the time the meat cutters wore rubber gloves, and sometimes they did not so I asked one of the supervisors about it. He said: “Oh, it’s with pork that they must wear gloves, but not with beef. It’s very easy to get an infection from pork, but not with beef.”
We Need Rules and Guidance
A long article could be made out of this subject, but that is not my intention here. Some more information is available at these two websites:
http://creationwiki.org/Clean_and_unclean_animals
This website shows more about the pathogens and toxicity of unclean animals verses clean animals. Nonetheless all meats should be well cooked.
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/hollymick/Macht1953.pdf
This website is a research paper of a study done in 1953. Even though it is old, it shows that there may be things about unclean meats that may be detrimental beyond the parasites that are more common in unclean meats. There are things we just don’t know, and it would be wise to consider that the laws of Leviticus 11 and
Deuteronomy 14 may indeed have been given by God for our good.
In western countries like the United States and Canada the issue with unclean and clean meats is usually pork verses beef. But other countries believe in eating dogs, monkeys, snakes, and every other kind of meat that can be imagined. But by the rules of Leviticus 11, if one is clean so also are all the others. People will eat crabs but think it disgusting if other peoples eat roaches. But what’s the difference? If pork is clean, so also is tarantula. We seem to want to have our own rules of unclean meats rather than the creator’s who made those animals and knows more about what is good for food and what is not. This is very similar to children and parents. The parents have rules for their children because they know best and the children don’t. We need rules too, for our good.
Parting thought: Retired astronauts are paid exorbitantly.
Holiness
by Bill Rollins
It might be said that the topic of the book of Leviticus is “holiness.” From the sacrifices, to the ordination of the Priests, to the chapter about clean foods (where God tells us that we are not to eat unclean food because we are holy), we find instructions concerning holiness - in the laws of cleanliness, holy days, holy years, and then, too, in chapters 19-21, we are told seven times to “be holy because the Eternal is holy.” But it is near the end of the last chapter of the book that we find a most remarkable statement about holiness. “But nothing that a man owns and devotes to the LORD - whether man or animal or family land - may be sold or redeemed; everything so devoted is most holy to the LORD. No person so devoted may be ransomed; he must be put to death” Leviticus 27:28. (emphasis mine)
The word “devote” (used three times in this passage) is a very curious word. It is the Hebrew word charm (Strong’s #2763), and it means “to devote, dedicate, to utterly destroy; the wholly giving over of something or someone to the Eternal often by totally destroying them.” This word is used to describe what Israel was to do to the cities that they would encounter in the land that God was given them. In Joshua 6:20, “When the trumpets sounded, the people shouted, and at the sound of the trumpet, when the people gave a loud shout, the wall collapsed; so every man charged straight in, and they took the city. They devoted [emphasis mine] the city to the LORD and destroyed with the sword every living thing in it - men and women, young and old, cattle, sheep and donkeys.”
I guess the thing that gets me to thinking is the fact that we have devoted ourselves to God and we are most holy to the Eternal. Nothing that existed in Jericho was to be kept - all was devoted to destruction to God! The connection here is unmistakable. We have a “self life” that underwent the waters of baptism and must be charm to God. This concept is of utmost importance, Brethren.
The wholly giving over of oneself to God is of genuine importance if we are to fellowship with the Father and His Son. Perhaps this concept is not something that is very well understood by God’s people, and yet it needs to be!
What do I gain by hanging onto any part of self? What is there about me that I do not want to “wholly give over” to the Eternal? And furthermore, why do I want to keep anything of this “self life”?
I believe that there is no way for me to “control” the old man, and so the only way to deal with the unruly child is to put him to death (Deut 21:18-21). The death of the old man is a painful thing and can even be a morbid subject. Why talk of death when the whole idea of the Bible is to bring life - “I came that they may have life and have it more abundantly.”
And we know Jesus Christ is our life.
Let me explain. Paul, in Galatians 5, states, “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” We were brought out of bondage to the slavery to sin by the death of our Savior. This we understand from the symbolism of the children of Israel being brought out of bondage to the Egyptians. Once brought out they were no longer in Egypt!! We are no longer in bondage to this world and its sinful ways! Oh, but the Israelites complained that their lives were better in Egypt. They traveled only three days from the Red Sea when they grumbled about having nothing to drink. They traveled only one month when they said, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” It was less than three months when, at the foot of Mt. Sinai, the people said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”
Just as they were not in bondage to Egypt and Pharaoh, we who accept the Messiah are not in bondage to the world, to sin, or to Satan. But just as they, many times, craved the things they left behind and the sins they indulged in in Egypt, so we commit sin. Plain and simple!
The ties to our heritage in Adam have been broken - our position is now in Messiah. But oh, how that old self life sometimes desires what it left and so it must be “charam,” wholly given over to God, devoted to God, totally destroyed - remember the definition given for the word charm: to devote, dedicate, to utterly destroy, the wholly giving over of something or someone to the Eternal - often by totally destroying.
Oh, how we shudder at the killings that the Israelites were to inflict upon those occupying the land. “When the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations - the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites, seven nations large and stronger than you - and when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy” (Deut 7:1). The wording here “destroy them totally” is the word charm.
We flinch at the concept placed before us here, but we must remember that Paul said, “These things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the fulfillment of the ages had come” (I Cor 10:11). And we can not flinch at what this means to us upon who the ends of the ages have come.
So, how do we totally destroy the self life? God has provided the Way! The Messiah has set us free from our past life of sins and from our connection to the lineage of Adam. We now belong to our Savior. We now find our life in Him! In one manner of speaking, He has given us His history (sinless) and He has taken upon Himself our history (sinful). But we cannot carry through on what He has imparted to us, and so we continue to sin. It seems as though the more we try to put sin out of our ives, there we try to live a sinless life, the more and more we see sin rearing its ugly head in our lives!
Remember how we started this article? We began with a quote from Leviticus 27:28: “Everything so devoted [to the Eternal] is most holy to the Eternal. No person so devoted may be ransomed, he must be put to death.” We talked of what we truly want - and that is life, and life more abundantly. But we also said that resurrection must precede life and death must precede resurrection. The self life must be put to death. God has provided a way.
- Matthew 16:24 - Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
- Mark 8:34 - Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
- Luke 9:23 - Then he said to them all, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”
If, in any system, the things which are essential to that system are denied, its demise is soon to follow. For example, if we neglect to put oil in our automobile's crankcase, the car will quit running. It will die. If a fireplace does not receive wood at regular intervals, it will go out. The fire will die.
So it is in the system of our “self life.” If it is denied, if it is neglected, if our vanity and pride are not fed, it will die. And Jesus, in all three of the gospels quoted above, tells us just what it is that goes along with the denial of self: it is taking up the cross! The cross is, of course, an implement of death. It was for our Savior, and it will be for our self life.
Remember this, my brothers and sisters! We have been freed from bondage to sin. Paul tells us in Romans 6:2, “We died to sin, how can we live in it any longer?” We are free from anger, free to not become offended, free from bondage to lust, free from malicious talk. We are free to love, free to be patient, free to have joy, peace, goodness, free to be meek. And when we fall, we are free to call on a Savior “who speak to the Father in our defense” - Jesus the Righteous One (1 John 2:1).
And on top of it all, we have the cross of Christ we can use to deny self and thereby inflect death upon it. Galatians 6:14 - “May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”
Do you not know how to apply the cross to your self life? Go to your Savior. He knows all about it. He has gone through it. He desires to show you how it is done. Remember, He loved you enough to give His life for yours, to trade His history for yours, and He gave Himself up for the Church, “to make her holy, cleaning her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless . . .” And He feeds and cares for the church. He is in your corner - always wanting you to come through to the holiness and perfection that comes with self denial. He wants to show you how to apply the cross.
May the love of God and of His Son, Jesus the Messiah, be upon us all. Amen!
Over, Under, or Around
by Cynthia Saladin
A couple of weeks ago, Ron was sitting in front of the fire, with his legs propped up on the hearth. Ebony came up on his left side. I was sitting on his right side, having just thrown some more wood into the fire. Ebony is a very equal opportunity believing dog. Once Ron scratched her ears a little bit, she wanted to allow me the same privilege. She thought about climbing over Ron’s legs, but quickly decided it would be smarter to go under. She got low enough for it to almost qualify as an army crawl! We laughed and laughed! How easy would it have been to just walk a few extra inches to go around!!
I couldn’t help thinking of how we humans are much the same. We want to go from point A to point B. We see one path. That’s the path we take, without stopping to consider that there may be a better alternative. We have the carrot in front of us (getting her ears scratched, in Ebony’s case) and we are determined that nothing will prevent us from achieving our goal.
But experience is an effective teacher. When I tried to set up the situation again, wondering if perhaps Ebony would entertain the kids as she had Ron and me, Ebony had thought through the situation a little more and casually walked around the chair to get her “carrot.” Perhaps she was a little more awake. Perhaps she had had time to think it through a little more. Whatever the reason, Ebony chose a better path the second time around. We’re like that too. Having once attempted a task, we realize that perhaps there could be some beneficial modifications. Isn’t that why we see advertisements purporting “NEW and IMPROVED”? Isn’t that why Microsoft will soon be announcing their new version of 10.0? Isn’t that why, when we have done the same task over and over, we start thinking of ways to improve the quality of the task and the speed in which we can do it? And most of the time, our improvement ideas are truly beneficial modifications.
But not when it comes to keeping God’s law, living according to the Biblical standard. God tells us the way to live, to follow His commandments, to take up our cross daily and follow Him, to obey Him. And yet, mankind being the way it is, we sometimes think we can go over or under. We’re improving on what God has decreed. Except it doesn’t work. There’s no such thing as a better modification on what God has told us to do.
The “carrot” is there: a relationship with God the Father through His Son Jesus Christ, leading to eternal life. If we are in covenant with God, then, as God, He has the right to decree what is acceptable to Him. We don’t get to “improve” upon His commandments. We can’t decide God didn’t really mean it. We can’t say that God knows our heart and He’ll understand why we didn’t obey Him. There’s a way to live, a way to pursue holiness, and it’s not up to us to determine what that looks like. Think about it the next time you are tempted to go over or under or around God’s law.
My Cousin’s Tapeworm
by Bill Stough
When I was a child growing up, our family ate a lot of pork. I liked the taste of bacon and ham and ate a lot of it. When I learned about the laws of clean and unclean meats listed in Leviticus 11 and Deuteronomy 14, there was sacrifice involved in giving up pork. Was that necessary, or were those only ceremonial laws which had a different purpose?
The standard argument that these laws were ceremonial goes something like this: Israel was to be a clean people spiritually. They were to set an example to all nations. To help them remember this purpose, God chose certain animals which would be clean and unclean. Each time a person ate, it would remind him that he should be spiritually clean before God and not be unclean as the gentiles were. But these were strictly ceremonial things and nothing was really physically wrong with any kind of meat.
Acts 10 is the most common scripture used to support the argument. However, verses 15 and 28 show that the purpose of Peter’s vision in this chapter was that God was now going to the gentiles and that Peter should not consider the people impure or unclean. But were the animals unclean?
Mary Ellen’s Example
I had a teenage cousin (Mary Ellen) in San Francisco, where I lived, who also liked pork. She started to lose weight and could never eat enough. What’s more, she felt something moving in her intestines! I will spare you the gruesome details but she found out she had a tapeworm inside her which ultimately turned out to be about 15 feet long. (Some get longer than that.)
Her doctor gave her medication and a special diet which caused her to pass that tapeworm. He also gave her a strong lecture about pork. He told her that pork can be a very dangerous meat and should never be eaten unless it was well done. Mary Ellen liked it rare. He said pork was far more likely to cause intestinal worms and other parasitic diseases than beef.
When I was a student at Lowell High School in San Francisco we ran an experiment in biology class. The teacher had us bring some meats from home and we examined them under microscopes. There was indeed a difference between beef and pork. We were finding pockets, or sacs, of wormlike creatures in the pork, but not in the beef. The teacher said these were cysts. These could develop into various kinds of parasitic diseases. He said it’s possible to get them in any meat, but it was pork that seemed to always have them. Indeed, none of us found cysts in our samples of beef.
The lesson he passed on to us was that we should always cook meat very well, especially pork. But it never occurred to any of us in his class to wonder if we should be eating well cooked worms and cysts.
Better Farming Methods?
Farmers used to go out and “slop the hogs.” They would feed them any kind of left over garbage and the hogs would eat it. Pigs seem to be natural garbage disposals. Such a practice would easily allow cysts in the garbage into the flesh of pigs. These animals could also get it from wallowing in feces. Then farmers would at some point slaughter those hogs and sell them to us for food. Legislation supposedly precludes such feeding practices today. What is the present day status of hog farming?
I spoke with hog farmer Todd Geisert, who owns a large pig farm near Washington, Missouri. Todd says he practices confinement farming. That is the practice of keeping his hogs penned up all their lives. It is also called factory farming. Todd says it is an economically profitable type of farming and requires less space. He does not “slop the hogs,” but feeds them grain.
Todd says he knows smaller operators who do “slop their hogs,” then sell the meat to stores. He knew of no laws that require feeding only certain types of food to hogs from which cysts could become part of their flesh. (Cysts can also enter the pigs from the feces in which they are perpetually wallowing, especially in confinement farming.) His reason for doing things as he does is economic. He is not a lawyer. He is a farmer. And what protections are there if meat is imported?
All meat is Safe?
I have two more examples from my own experiences. The first involves crab meat.
Crabs are bottom feeding creatures and apparently are natural garbage collectors, just as the pig is on land. My parents used to buy crab meat at the famous Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Crabs were cooked there by throwing whole live crabs into boiling water and letting them cook. My parents and sister liked crab meat, but I did not, so they did not make me eat it. That saved me from a violent food poisoning event on one occasion. Everyone but me became severely ill, and I will spare you the details of what that did to them. Crab is indeed an unclean animal. I’ve always thought of it as a sea spider. Most people won’t eat spiders, but think nothing of eating crabs.
My second example is from Union Meat Packing Company, of Union, Missouri. I formerly did service calls there on their electronically controlled equipment. I was an electronic technician and was self-employed. I kept noticing that some of the time the meat cutters wore rubber gloves, and sometimes they did not so I asked one of the supervisors about it. He said: “Oh, it’s with pork that they must wear gloves, but not with beef. It’s very easy to get an infection from pork, but not with beef.”
We Need Rules and Guidance
A long article could be made out of this subject, but that is not my intention here. Some more information is available at these two websites:
http://creationwiki.org/Clean_and_unclean_animals
This website shows more about the pathogens and toxicity of unclean animals verses clean animals. Nonetheless all meats should be well cooked.
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/hollymick/Macht1953.pdf
This website is a research paper of a study done in 1953. Even though it is old, it shows that there may be things about unclean meats that may be detrimental beyond the parasites that are more common in unclean meats. There are things we just don’t know, and it would be wise to consider that the laws of Leviticus 11 and
Deuteronomy 14 may indeed have been given by God for our good.
In western countries like the United States and Canada the issue with unclean and clean meats is usually pork verses beef. But other countries believe in eating dogs, monkeys, snakes, and every other kind of meat that can be imagined. But by the rules of Leviticus 11, if one is clean so also are all the others. People will eat crabs but think it disgusting if other peoples eat roaches. But what’s the difference? If pork is clean, so also is tarantula. We seem to want to have our own rules of unclean meats rather than the creator’s who made those animals and knows more about what is good for food and what is not. This is very similar to children and parents. The parents have rules for their children because they know best and the children don’t. We need rules too, for our good.
Parting thought: Retired astronauts are paid exorbitantly.
April 2015
A Tale of Three Captains
Bill Stough [email protected]
A dictionary describes a captain as one who commands, leads, or guides others, the one in the forefront, the leader. What are some captains like?
The Cruise Ship
In January of 2012, Captain Francesco Schettino was in charge of the cruise ship Costa Concordia with over 4000 people on board off the coast of Italy when it ran aground onto rocks. Those rocks ripped over a hundred foot gash down one side of the ship and the ship started to sink. The details of all that happened are under investigation but the actions of the captain are questionable. Some reports say the captain put the ship so close to Giglio Island so he could wave at friends on shore.
Captain Schettino was very popular as a ladies’ man, mostly because of his looks. After the accident, chaos reigned. The passengers and crew were given no clear direction. The crew members did what they could to save people, but some would still die. Apparently the captain was off the ship over four hours before evacuation was complete. The Italian Coast Guard spoke to him by radio and ordered him to get back on board and to take charge, but he refused, telling them it was dark. In one news report he reportedly told investigators that he tripped and fell into a life boat, which rescued him.
He is being charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship, and some are calling him Captain Coward.
Flight 1549
On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley Sullenberger was pilot in command of US Airways Flight 1549 with 155 people on board. He had just taken off from New York’s LaGuardia airport when the plane hit a large flock of birds, disabling both engines. He quickly decided he could not make it back to LaGuardia or glide as far as Teterboro airport in New Jersey. The only hope was to land in the Hudson River.
He took control and responsibility, told the passengers to brace for impact, and glided the plane just 900 feet over the George Washington Bridge. He had to keep the plane above stall speed so it wouldn’t drop from the sky, yet had to slow it down enough for a water landing, all without any engines.
Captain Sullenberger picked a spot on the Hudson very close to boats which could rescue the passengers, yet he had to be sure he didn’t hit those boats. Such a thing had never been attempted with this kind of plane before. He had to keep the nose high so the water wouldn’t make the plane cartwheel, yet not let the tail part hit too hard and destroy that area of the plane. All this he did without any engine power!
Captain Sullenberger saved all his passengers and made decisive and correct maneuvers. He never had the option of abandoning ship, but further proved his character after the landing. He walked the unflooded part of the passenger cabin twice to make sure everyone had evacuated before retrieving the plane’s maintenance logbook and being the last to evacuate the aircraft.
The Third Captain
We hold in high esteem a person who is courageous and takes great risks to protect those for whom he is responsible, who is indeed a person of character and who shows supreme leadership in a time of crisis. How often and how vividly do we see Jesus as being that way?
Scripture affirms that Jesus could have bailed out on his crucifixion and all the suffering of taking all our despicable unrighteousness upon himself. We may not grasp what was involved. To us it can sometimes seem to be a technical thing that he was going through. What was it really like?
“Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you will not fall into temptation.’ He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 23: 39-44.)”
I have never prayed so earnestly that I was flowing sweat like wounds gushing blood. I think Jesus knew something about what he was about to go through that we really don’t get. But he knew it so well that he asked his Father for a way out, and thought that might be possible. The account in Matthew 26: 39 puts it this way:
“ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”
Later that same night the priests came with an arresting party. Peter (John 18: 10) pulls out a sword and cuts off the servant of the high priest’s ear. Jesus rebukes Peter and heals that servant’s ear. Note the depth of what Jesus says next.
"‘Put your sword back in its place,’ Jesus said to him, ‘for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?’ (Matthew 26: 52-54)”
A Roman legion consisted of 3,000 to 6,000 soldiers. Jesus could have been given 36,000 to 72,000 angels by the Father if he had decided to bail out at this point! It was all up to Jesus to decide what he was going to do. He was determined to go ahead, and the worst part of what was coming was probably not the flogging and the crucifixion.
At some point as Jesus hung on the cross the Father looked down on him as sin, and in fact, the personification of all the sins of all of humanity. Jesus felt the Father leave him. The time that Jesus was separated from his close and righteous Father could have been as much as three hours.
“From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27: 45-46)”
I expect all of us have had the experience of feeling separated from God and unable to pray properly. That is, indeed, a terrible feeling. But there has always been a way back for us through repenting of our sins and letting Christ’s sacrifice atone for them. With Jesus there was no such way out, and even worse, he was carrying the guilt of all sins upon him. We can’t imagine what that would be like.
Psalm 22 also describes how Jesus felt as he took all our sins upon himself and is something we should read and meditate on. Jesus was doing all of this for us and he could have decided it was more than he could do and the Father would have pulled him out. Jesus, however cared about us, and the Father cared. It maters to God that we need help, forgiveness, deliverance, and we have no power to pull ourselves out of the traps that we have gotten into. And when someone puts forth that much effort into something then he holds it of highest value. That is why God doesn’t quit on us even when we think we’ve sinned too badly or too often, even after conversion. We can therefore take confidence in what Jesus said in Luke 12: 32.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”
A captain shows leadership. He fights for those for whom he is responsible. He acts bravely when crisis is at hand and doesn‘t quit until it is over and he really cares.
We have the best captain.
"Secularism, materialism, and the intrusive presence of things have put out the light in our souls and turned us into a generation of zombies."
~A.W. Tozer collected from cybersalt.org
A Prayer
anonymously submitted to our newsletter
Father: I find no rest this morning. It is the preparation for the Sabbath day and there is turmoil within me. I feel the struggle coming from the old man, the flesh. For the mind of man, my fleshly mind, is enmity against you. Somehow as I consider your word, I keep coming up with the words “peace” and “rest.” “The peace of God . . . shall guard your hearts and minds in Jesus the Messiah.” “Let the peace of Messiah rule in your hearts.” “Enter into His rest.” “In repentance and rest is your salvation.”
“Come unto me all you who labor and strive for I will give you rest.”
The solution is always found in your Son, Jesus the Messiah. I know this full well but . . . but there is this turmoil within me. “He who does not hate . . ., yes, even his own life cannot be my disciple.”
It is a painful thing to find myself hating my own life, but I know that it is a part of the process I must go through. Long days ago, when you first called me, my Father, I thought that I understood what it meant to hate myself. I repented of who I was, but it turns out, I didn’t really know who I was. The light you have shone upon my life has revealed much more than I ever saw back then.
Now I, a “suffering servant,” ask that you show to me the cross. I find no rest this morning.
“He was despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering” (Isaiah 53:3).
Am I to be a true disciple of your Son, my Holy Father? He is my Savior. He was perfect in His walk on this earth and He gave up His life for the salvation of all mankind - even me. I do accept His blood as the purchase price for me. “What a savior!”
I know that my sorrows stem from within me. I know what my life is like.
Father, do not take from me this cup, but show me who I am that I may take up that cross, follow my Savior, and give up all that I am. The work has been done by that true Suffering Servant, the real “Man of sorrows.” I hold up my hands to accept your will. Lead me in the paths of Righteousness. I love you, my Father. Amen.
An Invitation
by Sally Rollins
I have often wondered why it is so exciting to see the new moon. Why is it so important to us? Why get excited about a sliver of light in the heavens? As I pondered this, I thought: Perhaps the New Moon is an invitation, an invitation inviting us to the Holy Days, an invitation to meet with God.
The New Moon invitation before Passover reads: Prepare yourself - for in two weeks there will be a renewal of the covenant. Don’t come unprepared.
Then the next two New Moon invitations read: Don’t forget to count the days! The fields are ripe for harvest and the harvest must be completed before we reach the Feast of Firstfruits!
The following three New Moon invitations read: The wedding supper is being prepared - don't forget - make preparation!
And then the New Moon invitation of the 7th month! It’s time to come to meet your God! Put on the wedding garments and come rejoicing to meet the King! Take heed lest you become distracted by the demands and deceits of the world. Come to the Feast!!
In Remembrance
by Sally Rollins
Do you remember?
Remember how He brought us out of gloom, despair, and agony through the waters of the Red Sea - out of sin (Egypt); how He brought us out of satan’s kingdom into the Kingdom of God, he Kingdom of light, peace, and joy.
Remember how He has led us on the narrow path. Remember how, when we strayed from that path, He untangled us from the bramble bush and brought us back to the path - and the times He brought us back before we were entangled again in the world.
Remember how, when we stumbled, He picked us up and put a bandaid on our knee - and the times He caught us just before we fell onto the rocks.
Remember how, when we were tired and sat down to rest, He encouraged us to get up and continue because the goal is worth our every effort and this journey is not one we can give up on.
And then, once a year . . .
Once a year, we go beyond our journey in this life to consider a deeper, more profound spiritual concept. He says to us, “Do this in remembrance of Me.”
Col. 1:22 “But now He has reconciled us by His physical body, through death, to present us holy in God’s sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”
I Cor. 11:24 “ . . . and when He had blessed the bread, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
Remember - reconciled to The Father!
Eph. 1:7 “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin . . .”
I Cor. 11:25 “ . . . He took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ ”
Remember - redeemed for The Father!
“Do this in remembrance of Me.”
I Cor. 11:26 “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
Remembering the miracles that God has performed in our day-to-day lives is important. Would that I had recorded all the times that I have been protected from accidents, illnesses, hardships, storms, etc. Acknowledging God’s involvement in our lives increases our faith - and our joy.
But once a year - “Do this in remembrance of Me.” This is a command! A command to remember that our reconciliation with, and our redemption to the Father, came through the death of Yashua, the Anointed One. It is through His freely giving of His body and blood that we have the assurance of eternal life.
I Cor. 11:28 “A man ought to examine (test the attitude of his own heart and actions and his awareness of the significance of the bread and the cup) himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.”
We need to meditate, contemplate, and understand the incredible benefit and value of what our Savior did for us.
“Do this” (eat the bread and drink the cup) “in remembrance of Me.”
A Prayer
submitted anonymously for our newsletter
Father, I know that you are my Guide in every way and I thank you for your guidance. You hear my prayers and always act on them according to your holy will. All that exists belongs to you and every act of praise upon this earth is for You and You alone. For what can man do without Your holy breath present in this world? May all that has breath praise You, Most Holy and Righteous God!
I have spent much time at this table recently with Your word opened in front of me. The psalms of Asaph have given me much to ponder and You have allowed me to ponder and to muse as each evening I walk with You through the streets of this town. Oh, that I might find it within me to talk with You all the day through, just as I have on these walks in the evening.
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).
You are my portion, oh God my King. Why is it that I would ever turn from Your face and seek my own way? Your presence is awesome to my heart and reveals to me just how shallow and empty this world is. You are the only portion I have.
“For the Eternal’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance” (Deut. 32:9).
Your people are Your portion - what an amazing statement! What an amazing thought! You have created, called, carried, and cleansed us and we are Yours. Your Son died, delivered us, and directs us to You. What physical thing on this earth could You ever desire, for they shall all pass away? May my desires be as Your desires, always.
I, a created being of Yours, am being transformed into Your image. It was You who brought me into fellowship with You and if I would see it, understand it, yes, even live it, (oh my Father, You desire Godly offspring!) I could be at one with You. May I bow in humble adoration at the thought.
I am Your portion as You are my portion. I am brought low at the thought; I bow my head. For who am I (as your servant, the Psalmist, has said) that You should care for me and make me a part of Your portion.
I am so ashamed of my selfishness, ego, pride, and vanity. I live as a son of this world so often and in so many ways, and yet, You know my frame and forgive me and invite me once more to dwell in Your house all the days of my life, to gaze upon Your beauty and to seek You in Your temple (Psalm 27:4).
My ways are as nothing, and I need to see it that way. Why should I even speak unless You command me to - yes, why should I?
Oh that I might wait upon You and only speak Your words, just as Zechariah the priest was dumb until the birth of his son, John. So might I be silent until that new creation within me speaks Your words - but I am weak. Forgive me, my God, forgive me.
Oh that I might win praise for You! That I may never again seek praise for myself. I am weak. Forgive me, oh my God, forgive me.
Oh that I might dwell with You all the days of my life!
Final Thought:
Retired astronauts are paid exorbitantly.
A Tale of Three Captains
Bill Stough [email protected]
A dictionary describes a captain as one who commands, leads, or guides others, the one in the forefront, the leader. What are some captains like?
The Cruise Ship
In January of 2012, Captain Francesco Schettino was in charge of the cruise ship Costa Concordia with over 4000 people on board off the coast of Italy when it ran aground onto rocks. Those rocks ripped over a hundred foot gash down one side of the ship and the ship started to sink. The details of all that happened are under investigation but the actions of the captain are questionable. Some reports say the captain put the ship so close to Giglio Island so he could wave at friends on shore.
Captain Schettino was very popular as a ladies’ man, mostly because of his looks. After the accident, chaos reigned. The passengers and crew were given no clear direction. The crew members did what they could to save people, but some would still die. Apparently the captain was off the ship over four hours before evacuation was complete. The Italian Coast Guard spoke to him by radio and ordered him to get back on board and to take charge, but he refused, telling them it was dark. In one news report he reportedly told investigators that he tripped and fell into a life boat, which rescued him.
He is being charged with manslaughter and abandoning ship, and some are calling him Captain Coward.
Flight 1549
On January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley Sullenberger was pilot in command of US Airways Flight 1549 with 155 people on board. He had just taken off from New York’s LaGuardia airport when the plane hit a large flock of birds, disabling both engines. He quickly decided he could not make it back to LaGuardia or glide as far as Teterboro airport in New Jersey. The only hope was to land in the Hudson River.
He took control and responsibility, told the passengers to brace for impact, and glided the plane just 900 feet over the George Washington Bridge. He had to keep the plane above stall speed so it wouldn’t drop from the sky, yet had to slow it down enough for a water landing, all without any engines.
Captain Sullenberger picked a spot on the Hudson very close to boats which could rescue the passengers, yet he had to be sure he didn’t hit those boats. Such a thing had never been attempted with this kind of plane before. He had to keep the nose high so the water wouldn’t make the plane cartwheel, yet not let the tail part hit too hard and destroy that area of the plane. All this he did without any engine power!
Captain Sullenberger saved all his passengers and made decisive and correct maneuvers. He never had the option of abandoning ship, but further proved his character after the landing. He walked the unflooded part of the passenger cabin twice to make sure everyone had evacuated before retrieving the plane’s maintenance logbook and being the last to evacuate the aircraft.
The Third Captain
We hold in high esteem a person who is courageous and takes great risks to protect those for whom he is responsible, who is indeed a person of character and who shows supreme leadership in a time of crisis. How often and how vividly do we see Jesus as being that way?
Scripture affirms that Jesus could have bailed out on his crucifixion and all the suffering of taking all our despicable unrighteousness upon himself. We may not grasp what was involved. To us it can sometimes seem to be a technical thing that he was going through. What was it really like?
“Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, ‘Pray that you will not fall into temptation.’ He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, ‘Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.’ An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 23: 39-44.)”
I have never prayed so earnestly that I was flowing sweat like wounds gushing blood. I think Jesus knew something about what he was about to go through that we really don’t get. But he knew it so well that he asked his Father for a way out, and thought that might be possible. The account in Matthew 26: 39 puts it this way:
“ Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, ‘My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.’”
Later that same night the priests came with an arresting party. Peter (John 18: 10) pulls out a sword and cuts off the servant of the high priest’s ear. Jesus rebukes Peter and heals that servant’s ear. Note the depth of what Jesus says next.
"‘Put your sword back in its place,’ Jesus said to him, ‘for all who draw the sword will die by the sword. Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that say it must happen in this way?’ (Matthew 26: 52-54)”
A Roman legion consisted of 3,000 to 6,000 soldiers. Jesus could have been given 36,000 to 72,000 angels by the Father if he had decided to bail out at this point! It was all up to Jesus to decide what he was going to do. He was determined to go ahead, and the worst part of what was coming was probably not the flogging and the crucifixion.
At some point as Jesus hung on the cross the Father looked down on him as sin, and in fact, the personification of all the sins of all of humanity. Jesus felt the Father leave him. The time that Jesus was separated from his close and righteous Father could have been as much as three hours.
“From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, ‘Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?’--which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Matthew 27: 45-46)”
I expect all of us have had the experience of feeling separated from God and unable to pray properly. That is, indeed, a terrible feeling. But there has always been a way back for us through repenting of our sins and letting Christ’s sacrifice atone for them. With Jesus there was no such way out, and even worse, he was carrying the guilt of all sins upon him. We can’t imagine what that would be like.
Psalm 22 also describes how Jesus felt as he took all our sins upon himself and is something we should read and meditate on. Jesus was doing all of this for us and he could have decided it was more than he could do and the Father would have pulled him out. Jesus, however cared about us, and the Father cared. It maters to God that we need help, forgiveness, deliverance, and we have no power to pull ourselves out of the traps that we have gotten into. And when someone puts forth that much effort into something then he holds it of highest value. That is why God doesn’t quit on us even when we think we’ve sinned too badly or too often, even after conversion. We can therefore take confidence in what Jesus said in Luke 12: 32.
“Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom.”
A captain shows leadership. He fights for those for whom he is responsible. He acts bravely when crisis is at hand and doesn‘t quit until it is over and he really cares.
We have the best captain.
"Secularism, materialism, and the intrusive presence of things have put out the light in our souls and turned us into a generation of zombies."
~A.W. Tozer collected from cybersalt.org
A Prayer
anonymously submitted to our newsletter
Father: I find no rest this morning. It is the preparation for the Sabbath day and there is turmoil within me. I feel the struggle coming from the old man, the flesh. For the mind of man, my fleshly mind, is enmity against you. Somehow as I consider your word, I keep coming up with the words “peace” and “rest.” “The peace of God . . . shall guard your hearts and minds in Jesus the Messiah.” “Let the peace of Messiah rule in your hearts.” “Enter into His rest.” “In repentance and rest is your salvation.”
“Come unto me all you who labor and strive for I will give you rest.”
The solution is always found in your Son, Jesus the Messiah. I know this full well but . . . but there is this turmoil within me. “He who does not hate . . ., yes, even his own life cannot be my disciple.”
It is a painful thing to find myself hating my own life, but I know that it is a part of the process I must go through. Long days ago, when you first called me, my Father, I thought that I understood what it meant to hate myself. I repented of who I was, but it turns out, I didn’t really know who I was. The light you have shone upon my life has revealed much more than I ever saw back then.
Now I, a “suffering servant,” ask that you show to me the cross. I find no rest this morning.
“He was despised and rejected by man, a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering” (Isaiah 53:3).
Am I to be a true disciple of your Son, my Holy Father? He is my Savior. He was perfect in His walk on this earth and He gave up His life for the salvation of all mankind - even me. I do accept His blood as the purchase price for me. “What a savior!”
I know that my sorrows stem from within me. I know what my life is like.
Father, do not take from me this cup, but show me who I am that I may take up that cross, follow my Savior, and give up all that I am. The work has been done by that true Suffering Servant, the real “Man of sorrows.” I hold up my hands to accept your will. Lead me in the paths of Righteousness. I love you, my Father. Amen.
An Invitation
by Sally Rollins
I have often wondered why it is so exciting to see the new moon. Why is it so important to us? Why get excited about a sliver of light in the heavens? As I pondered this, I thought: Perhaps the New Moon is an invitation, an invitation inviting us to the Holy Days, an invitation to meet with God.
The New Moon invitation before Passover reads: Prepare yourself - for in two weeks there will be a renewal of the covenant. Don’t come unprepared.
Then the next two New Moon invitations read: Don’t forget to count the days! The fields are ripe for harvest and the harvest must be completed before we reach the Feast of Firstfruits!
The following three New Moon invitations read: The wedding supper is being prepared - don't forget - make preparation!
And then the New Moon invitation of the 7th month! It’s time to come to meet your God! Put on the wedding garments and come rejoicing to meet the King! Take heed lest you become distracted by the demands and deceits of the world. Come to the Feast!!
In Remembrance
by Sally Rollins
Do you remember?
Remember how He brought us out of gloom, despair, and agony through the waters of the Red Sea - out of sin (Egypt); how He brought us out of satan’s kingdom into the Kingdom of God, he Kingdom of light, peace, and joy.
Remember how He has led us on the narrow path. Remember how, when we strayed from that path, He untangled us from the bramble bush and brought us back to the path - and the times He brought us back before we were entangled again in the world.
Remember how, when we stumbled, He picked us up and put a bandaid on our knee - and the times He caught us just before we fell onto the rocks.
Remember how, when we were tired and sat down to rest, He encouraged us to get up and continue because the goal is worth our every effort and this journey is not one we can give up on.
And then, once a year . . .
Once a year, we go beyond our journey in this life to consider a deeper, more profound spiritual concept. He says to us, “Do this in remembrance of Me.”
Col. 1:22 “But now He has reconciled us by His physical body, through death, to present us holy in God’s sight, without blemish and free from accusation.”
I Cor. 11:24 “ . . . and when He had blessed the bread, He broke it and said, ‘This is My body, which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
Remember - reconciled to The Father!
Eph. 1:7 “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin . . .”
I Cor. 11:25 “ . . . He took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood, do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ ”
Remember - redeemed for The Father!
“Do this in remembrance of Me.”
I Cor. 11:26 “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.”
Remembering the miracles that God has performed in our day-to-day lives is important. Would that I had recorded all the times that I have been protected from accidents, illnesses, hardships, storms, etc. Acknowledging God’s involvement in our lives increases our faith - and our joy.
But once a year - “Do this in remembrance of Me.” This is a command! A command to remember that our reconciliation with, and our redemption to the Father, came through the death of Yashua, the Anointed One. It is through His freely giving of His body and blood that we have the assurance of eternal life.
I Cor. 11:28 “A man ought to examine (test the attitude of his own heart and actions and his awareness of the significance of the bread and the cup) himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup.”
We need to meditate, contemplate, and understand the incredible benefit and value of what our Savior did for us.
“Do this” (eat the bread and drink the cup) “in remembrance of Me.”
A Prayer
submitted anonymously for our newsletter
Father, I know that you are my Guide in every way and I thank you for your guidance. You hear my prayers and always act on them according to your holy will. All that exists belongs to you and every act of praise upon this earth is for You and You alone. For what can man do without Your holy breath present in this world? May all that has breath praise You, Most Holy and Righteous God!
I have spent much time at this table recently with Your word opened in front of me. The psalms of Asaph have given me much to ponder and You have allowed me to ponder and to muse as each evening I walk with You through the streets of this town. Oh, that I might find it within me to talk with You all the day through, just as I have on these walks in the evening.
“My flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever” (Psalm 73:26).
You are my portion, oh God my King. Why is it that I would ever turn from Your face and seek my own way? Your presence is awesome to my heart and reveals to me just how shallow and empty this world is. You are the only portion I have.
“For the Eternal’s portion is His people, Jacob His allotted inheritance” (Deut. 32:9).
Your people are Your portion - what an amazing statement! What an amazing thought! You have created, called, carried, and cleansed us and we are Yours. Your Son died, delivered us, and directs us to You. What physical thing on this earth could You ever desire, for they shall all pass away? May my desires be as Your desires, always.
I, a created being of Yours, am being transformed into Your image. It was You who brought me into fellowship with You and if I would see it, understand it, yes, even live it, (oh my Father, You desire Godly offspring!) I could be at one with You. May I bow in humble adoration at the thought.
I am Your portion as You are my portion. I am brought low at the thought; I bow my head. For who am I (as your servant, the Psalmist, has said) that You should care for me and make me a part of Your portion.
I am so ashamed of my selfishness, ego, pride, and vanity. I live as a son of this world so often and in so many ways, and yet, You know my frame and forgive me and invite me once more to dwell in Your house all the days of my life, to gaze upon Your beauty and to seek You in Your temple (Psalm 27:4).
My ways are as nothing, and I need to see it that way. Why should I even speak unless You command me to - yes, why should I?
Oh that I might wait upon You and only speak Your words, just as Zechariah the priest was dumb until the birth of his son, John. So might I be silent until that new creation within me speaks Your words - but I am weak. Forgive me, my God, forgive me.
Oh that I might win praise for You! That I may never again seek praise for myself. I am weak. Forgive me, oh my God, forgive me.
Oh that I might dwell with You all the days of my life!
Final Thought:
Retired astronauts are paid exorbitantly.
May 2015
LIFE AFTER DELIVERY (cybersalt.org)
In a mother’s womb were two babies. One asked the other: “Do you believe in life after delivery?” The other replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery. Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”
“Nonsense” said the first. “There is no life after delivery. What kind of life would that be?”
The second said, “I don’t know, but there will be more light than here. Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths. Maybe we will have other senses that we can’t understand now.”
The first replied, “That is absurd. Walking is impossible. And eating with our mouths? Ridiculous! The umbilical cord supplies nutrition and everything we need. But the umbilical cord is so short. Life after delivery is to be logically excluded.”
The second insisted, “Well I think there is something and maybe it’s different than it is here. Maybe we won’t need this physical cord anymore.”
The first replied, “Nonsense. And moreover if there is life, then why has no one has ever come back from there? Delivery is the end of life, and in the after-delivery there is nothing but darkness and silence and oblivion. It takes us nowhere.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said the second, “but certainly we will meet Mother and she will take care of us.”
The first replied “Mother? You actually believe in Mother? That’s laughable. If Mother exists then where is She now?”
The second said, “She is all around us. We are surrounded by her. We are of Her. It is in Her that we live. Without Her this world would not and could not exist.”
Said the first: “Well I don’t see Her, so it is only logical that She doesn’t exist.”
To which the second replied, “Sometimes, when you’re in silence and you focus and you really listen, you can perceive Her presence, and you can hear Her loving voice, calling down from above.”
- Útmutató a Léleknek (Originally written in Hungarian by Útmutató a Léleknek, translated by Miranda Linda Weisz)
Commanded to Count
by Cynthia Saladin
What do you associate with each of God’s holy days? Assembling before God to worship Him. Rejoicing. Feasting - well, except for Atonement. Seeing church family. Focusing on God. Getting our priorities realigned. You could probably add to my list.
What about Tabernacles specifically? What do you think of? Well, dwelling. We are told to dwell in temporary dwellings for seven days.
What about the Days of Unleavened Bread, specifically? We are told to refrain from eating leavened bread, but also we’re commanded to eat unleavened bread.
What about Pentecost? Somehow between the spring holy days and the fall holy days, this one day seems to creep up on us without much fanfare. So isn’t it ironic, then, that God would command us to count? We’re to count off seven complete weeks from the wave sheaf offering (Jesus’ resurrection), even up to the morrow after the sabbath, the 50th day, Pentecost.
So . . . how has your counting been going? Know what day of the count we’re on?
The Smothers Brothers did a song about Mediocre Fred. In one verse, they sang, “The days went by all dull and gray. He didn’t think much and had little to say.” I don’t have that problem. In fact, our days have been bright, full of sunshine, and very busy. And if you thought, perhaps, that homeschooling and gardening and every day life wasn’t enough, we were adopted by a puppy a week and a half ago. I’m doing very little these days other than playing with the puppy, house-training the puppy, rescuing the black labs from the terrorizing efforts of the puppy. My mind rarely is just blank and I have lots to say; just ask me.
Still, both extremes - having nothing to do and being way too busy - can cause you to lose track of the count. If every day is the same, if there’s nothing to distinguish one from another, then it’s hard to remember what day of the week it is, let alone what day of the count. On the other hand, if you’re so busy that you’re not sure which way is up, it’s going to be similarly difficult to remember what day of the count you’re on.
O.K. so I’m busy. What’s the big deal about keeping track of the 50 days to Pentecost? I don’t know for sure. I could guess, but the Bible doesn’t really spell it out in black and white. In the end, we count because God tells us to. He’s our God. He tells us to count, we count.
Still, our God doesn’t do anything without a good reason.
Perhaps it’s about seeing each day of our life as a gift from God which shouldn’t be wasted. Teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom. Psalm 90:12
Perhaps it’s about the symbolism of 50 - a number of Jubilee. Since Jesus is our Jubilee, since we gain our freedom from the penalty of sin through Jesus Christ, perhaps it’s the celebration of the life we have through Jesus Christ.
Perhaps it has something to do with completeness. Seven is the number of completeness and seven sevens would be complete completeness. Perhaps we count the seven sevens to emphasize that we are only complete in Jesus Christ.
Perhaps it’s an object lesson to help us understand that once we’ve been saved by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Passover, Days of Unleavened Bread, Wave Sheaf Offering) that we must go on to perfection. It’s a process; we must pursue holiness. We must learn to seek God all of our lives, every day. Each day counts.
Perhaps the counting underlines the incredible significance of the giving of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The gift of the Holy Spirit makes it possible for the new creature in Christ to grow, to be led into all truth, to discern what is right and wrong according to God’s definition. The Holy Spirit is the downpayment on what we will be in God’s kingdom.
All of this sounds good, but the reality is: we don’t know for sure why God tells us to count the days. We just know that He has the right to tell us and to expect that we’ll obey. So in-between planting the garden and doing laundry and cleaning house and 4H projects, I’m taking advantage of having to take a rambunctious puppy outside to potty. I’m using the extra walks around the pond, in an effort to wear him out, to my advantage. When I have to hold the puppy in my lap and stroke his head instead of pulling the weeds in front of me, I stop and consider our new puppy, Pepper, a blessing from God. He makes me stop what I’m doing. He’s interrupted my spring plans. So while I’m stopped anyway, I take a few minutes to thank God for puppies who chase June bugs and bite hoses and snap at the spray of water, and who make me laugh at his antics. My days don’t zoom by in a blur of indistinguishable activity; now they zoom by with a peppering of insuppressible puppy.
But Pepper also makes me stop and think about this life, my part in God’s plan, how I’m supposed to be spending my days, what really matters, and he reminds me to count. These puppy days won’t last very long. Pepper won’t have that wonderful puppy smell much longer. Soon he’ll be a gangly adolescent. Similarly, this life doesn’t last very long. God has blessed us with great things to enjoy - spring weather, winning Cardinals, lilacs and iris, the first ripe strawberry, and puppies. But we can’t forget to count in the midst of the distraction of blessings. I know that for the Saladins, this will be a count that none of us will ever forget because Pepper is a part of it. And that’s a blessing from God.
“Worry is interest paid in advance for a debt you may never owe.”
A friend sent this blog post to me in early January, but it doesn’t have to be started at the turn of the secular year. It’s a good thing to remember how God has blessed us so greatly all year long - maybe reading the blessings at the Feast of Tabernacles.
I think we may have a new tradition in our household! Some of you may remember me posting around this time last year about starting a "Joy Jar". I placed a jar on the kitchen counter. I encouraged our family members to write down joyful things that happened throughout the year on a slip of paper. They were to date it, fold it, and put it in the jar. (NO PEEKING!) It could be anything: something funny that happened, something touching, a goal met, an epiphany...just anything that brought JOY. Last night, on New Years Eve, (and prior to the boys going their separate ways) we made a nice dinner. During dinner, we took turns reading from the slips of paper gathered throughout 2014. WOW! I wish I would have started this tradition long ago! There were so many little moments that would have been forgotten in the hubbub of life. In my mind, 2014 was a pretty awful year. I have been hit with many things that sort of rocked my world. But this simple little "Joy Jar" put it all in perspective. I AM SO BLESSED! WE are ALL SO BLESSED! As a family, we were reminded of all the things that we have to be so very grateful for. God is so GOOD! I urge you all to do this. Even if you have a child away at college, they can participate. They can write down their joyful things, collect them, and add them to the jar when they return home. I promise you, it will be so worth it! Philippians 4:8 "...whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy--think about such things.”
Parting Thought:
One night at the dinner table, the wife commented, "When we were first married, you took the small piece of steak and gave me the larger. Now you take the large one and leave me the smaller. You don't love me any more?"
"Nonsense, darling," replied the husband, "you just cook better now."
June 2015
The Start of Something New
by Patricia Manning
Have you ever noticed that if you have a perfect circle, six other circles of the same size will fit around it so that all touch the center one? For example, six pennies can fit around a center penny. Six dimes will fit around one dime. Six canning jars fit around a central seventh jar within my round canner. I like to call this the “rule of sevens”. By the way, I’m not the first to notice the completeness of the number seven or even the example with circles (see The Seventh Circle in Biblical Prophesy by Wayne Atkinson).
Seven is the number of perfection or completeness in the Bible. There are seven days in the week, seven days in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, seven days in the Feast of Tabernacles. In the count to Pentecost we see seven sets of seven up to the forty-ninth day, a perfect completeness.
The fiftieth day in the count to Pentecost is the first day of the start of something new. We’ve read of some incredible “new things” that came on the day of Pentecost. For example, the children of Israel, after four hundred years of slavery, were congregated at Mount Sinai at the beginning of the third month (Ex 19:1) at the time of Pentecost. Amazing events occurred at that time. God met with them. God came down on the mountain in the sight of all the people (Exodus 19:11). They saw his power in lightning, fire and shaking of the mountain. They heard his voice (Deut 5:22) like thunder and seventy lucky ones shared a meal with Him on a pavement like sapphire (Ex 24:10).
In Jesus’s day, he made it clear that he brought something new. “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins" Mark 2:22. “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made” Mark 2:21. One new thing was the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. In this way, God’s people were indwelt, giving them a renewed covenant with new minds and hearts made of something besides stone (Hebrews 8, Eze 11:19). They (and we) met with God in a very personal way and were transformed by it.
Leading up to the Feast of Pentecost, the early harvest of barley was completed within seven weeks of seven days. Then on Pentecost, the fiftieth day, two leavened wheat loaves from a new harvest were lifted up as a wave offering to the Eternal (Exodus 34:22). For us today, this first day in the next circle should bring to mind both the remembrance and the anticipation of something new.
A yawn is just a silent scream for coffee.
Of To-Do Lists and Sundry Plans
by Cynthia Saladin
I was thinking of this phrase the other day:
If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
Close upon the heels of that, this popped into my head:
The best laid plans of mice and men . . .
And then:
Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape.
I’m a list person. I make out a list of the things I should do so that I won’t forget, but also for the sheer fun of crossing them off once they’re accomplished. And I must confess, sometimes I write down stuff I’ve done, after it’s done, just so I can turn around and cross it off. But sometimes I do that because the tasks on my list are so big that it will take days, or weeks, before I can cross them off. So I write down things, like “Sweep kitchen floor,” so that I can feel that I’ve accomplished something during the day!
Then there are days when I get up early, ready to go and tackle the list for the day, determined to be productive. Something unexpected happens. One of the kids wakes up with a fever. The basement springs a leak during the sudden thunderstorm. It starts pouring just as I’m headed outside to work. Sometimes it completely derails my day. Sometimes it just pushes the tasks back a couple of hours, and I know I can still get things done, even if I am now realizing I’m not going to get anywhere close to crossing everything off the list.
And while we’re talking about the list, can I mention how they grow? I can wake up thinking, “I only have to do this one thing today.” By the time I’m downstairs, I’ve thought of sixteen things to add to my list. I’m ready to go back to bed and pull the covers up over my head.
The other absolutely bewildering thing is that I now have kids who can do some of these big tasks for me. I really haven’t had to mow in two, maybe three, years. The boys do it for me. So what happened to those hours, hours!!, that I used to spend mowing? They’ve completely disappeared! Seriously! And it’s not just the mowing. I’ve noticed this incredible phenomenon with other tasks. The kids may be doing more, but I still don’t have more time.
My great-grandmother once told me, when I was lamenting that I could use an extra hour in every day, that it wouldn’t do any good; I would soon fill it up too.
Why am I so busy? I would like to list all of the positive reasons like:
I have three kids, a husband, and three dogs;
I have a big house;
I have a wonderful place to live;
I have lots of things to do that I’m interested in;
I’m homeschooling my kids;
I like doing things when people ask - if I can.
But just listing the positive would be a serious oversight. You see, allowing myself to be too busy means that:
I don’t take time to enjoy a cool breeze;
I don’t sit quietly to meditate on God’s plan for my life;
I don’t take the time to re-evaluate and prioritize my goals;
I don’t spend enough time doing “fun” things with my kids who are growing into adults right before my eyes!
I miss out on those conversations which happen when you’re sitting quietly and you’re not in a hurry to go do something else.
God has given me a couple of jolts this spring. The first is Pepper, the blue heeler mix who has adopted us. He has been the culprit responsible for messing up my list on more than one occasion. It’s hard to sweep the floor. It’s hard to pick strawberries. It’s hard to dig mulch when the puppy jumps on it, bites it, and knocks it all off. Let’s face it, it’s hard to walk when you have a puppy wrapped around your foot, growling. But . . . Ron says that he makes me laugh. Maybe the laughter outweighs the stuff I’m not getting done.
The second one was an unexpected jolt. I don’t know what I was thinking. If it took four of us three hours to pick all of the strawberries, why did I think I could stem them by myself? After three hours and only four gallons done, I was ready to cry “uncle!” I got help from two unexpected sources. Christopher was very willing to come help. That was very cool. The other was my husband - who has his own to-do list that is as long as his arm. And, no, I have not added any to it. He does not have a honey-do list. But what an incredible blessing that was! What fun to stem strawberries with my husband, to talk about whatever happened to come across our hearts! I don’t know what I’m going to have to cut out of my life, but I’m not willing to miss out on that seemingly unimportant, yet incredibly valuable time when we talk about nothing and everything.
So I was reminded of another saying:
You only go around once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
I often pray for wisdom - when I’m teaching my children or doing the sabbath school lessons or talking with others about what I believe. But I’m convinced that I need to ask for wisdom in how I allocate my time. I need to be very jealous of my time for the good of my family, my marriage, and my relationship with my Savior. I need to think twice before volunteering to help. I need to count to ten before I take on another project. I need to stop and listen to God’s leading before I start down another hectic path, making another to-do list.
It’s this way: there are lots of things I can do. I’m interested in so many things. Life is so interesting and exciting. But! Just because I can do so many things doesn’t mean I should do so many things! Ron would just shudder to think of the plans and projects which germinated in my thoughts today. (I’m serious!! It was a very interesting day talking with a bunch of homeschooling moms!!) Would these projects be fun? Yes! Do I have time for them? No. Can I give up something else so I can do them? Probably not. Will it matter in the long run? Not likely. Maybe I should wear a sign around my neck which tells me to say “no” to all projects unless I can answer “yes” to all four of these questions!
We’ve just come through seven weeks of counting to Pentecost. Are we supposed to count each day? Or is it just that we’re to count to Pentecost? I don’t know that you can state either unequivocally and emphatically. But I do know that Moses asked God, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12) and God says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10a).
My goal is to be wise enough to be still, to have entire days when everything on my to-do list is totally focused on what’s profitable for the kingdom. What about you? What’s on your to-do list today?
The Start of Something New
by Patricia Manning
Have you ever noticed that if you have a perfect circle, six other circles of the same size will fit around it so that all touch the center one? For example, six pennies can fit around a center penny. Six dimes will fit around one dime. Six canning jars fit around a central seventh jar within my round canner. I like to call this the “rule of sevens”. By the way, I’m not the first to notice the completeness of the number seven or even the example with circles (see The Seventh Circle in Biblical Prophesy by Wayne Atkinson).
Seven is the number of perfection or completeness in the Bible. There are seven days in the week, seven days in the Feast of Unleavened Bread, seven days in the Feast of Tabernacles. In the count to Pentecost we see seven sets of seven up to the forty-ninth day, a perfect completeness.
The fiftieth day in the count to Pentecost is the first day of the start of something new. We’ve read of some incredible “new things” that came on the day of Pentecost. For example, the children of Israel, after four hundred years of slavery, were congregated at Mount Sinai at the beginning of the third month (Ex 19:1) at the time of Pentecost. Amazing events occurred at that time. God met with them. God came down on the mountain in the sight of all the people (Exodus 19:11). They saw his power in lightning, fire and shaking of the mountain. They heard his voice (Deut 5:22) like thunder and seventy lucky ones shared a meal with Him on a pavement like sapphire (Ex 24:10).
In Jesus’s day, he made it clear that he brought something new. “And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins—and the wine is destroyed, and so are the skins. But new wine is for fresh wineskins" Mark 2:22. “No one sews a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the patch tears away from it, the new from the old, and a worse tear is made” Mark 2:21. One new thing was the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. In this way, God’s people were indwelt, giving them a renewed covenant with new minds and hearts made of something besides stone (Hebrews 8, Eze 11:19). They (and we) met with God in a very personal way and were transformed by it.
Leading up to the Feast of Pentecost, the early harvest of barley was completed within seven weeks of seven days. Then on Pentecost, the fiftieth day, two leavened wheat loaves from a new harvest were lifted up as a wave offering to the Eternal (Exodus 34:22). For us today, this first day in the next circle should bring to mind both the remembrance and the anticipation of something new.
A yawn is just a silent scream for coffee.
Of To-Do Lists and Sundry Plans
by Cynthia Saladin
I was thinking of this phrase the other day:
If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.
Close upon the heels of that, this popped into my head:
The best laid plans of mice and men . . .
And then:
Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape.
I’m a list person. I make out a list of the things I should do so that I won’t forget, but also for the sheer fun of crossing them off once they’re accomplished. And I must confess, sometimes I write down stuff I’ve done, after it’s done, just so I can turn around and cross it off. But sometimes I do that because the tasks on my list are so big that it will take days, or weeks, before I can cross them off. So I write down things, like “Sweep kitchen floor,” so that I can feel that I’ve accomplished something during the day!
Then there are days when I get up early, ready to go and tackle the list for the day, determined to be productive. Something unexpected happens. One of the kids wakes up with a fever. The basement springs a leak during the sudden thunderstorm. It starts pouring just as I’m headed outside to work. Sometimes it completely derails my day. Sometimes it just pushes the tasks back a couple of hours, and I know I can still get things done, even if I am now realizing I’m not going to get anywhere close to crossing everything off the list.
And while we’re talking about the list, can I mention how they grow? I can wake up thinking, “I only have to do this one thing today.” By the time I’m downstairs, I’ve thought of sixteen things to add to my list. I’m ready to go back to bed and pull the covers up over my head.
The other absolutely bewildering thing is that I now have kids who can do some of these big tasks for me. I really haven’t had to mow in two, maybe three, years. The boys do it for me. So what happened to those hours, hours!!, that I used to spend mowing? They’ve completely disappeared! Seriously! And it’s not just the mowing. I’ve noticed this incredible phenomenon with other tasks. The kids may be doing more, but I still don’t have more time.
My great-grandmother once told me, when I was lamenting that I could use an extra hour in every day, that it wouldn’t do any good; I would soon fill it up too.
Why am I so busy? I would like to list all of the positive reasons like:
I have three kids, a husband, and three dogs;
I have a big house;
I have a wonderful place to live;
I have lots of things to do that I’m interested in;
I’m homeschooling my kids;
I like doing things when people ask - if I can.
But just listing the positive would be a serious oversight. You see, allowing myself to be too busy means that:
I don’t take time to enjoy a cool breeze;
I don’t sit quietly to meditate on God’s plan for my life;
I don’t take the time to re-evaluate and prioritize my goals;
I don’t spend enough time doing “fun” things with my kids who are growing into adults right before my eyes!
I miss out on those conversations which happen when you’re sitting quietly and you’re not in a hurry to go do something else.
God has given me a couple of jolts this spring. The first is Pepper, the blue heeler mix who has adopted us. He has been the culprit responsible for messing up my list on more than one occasion. It’s hard to sweep the floor. It’s hard to pick strawberries. It’s hard to dig mulch when the puppy jumps on it, bites it, and knocks it all off. Let’s face it, it’s hard to walk when you have a puppy wrapped around your foot, growling. But . . . Ron says that he makes me laugh. Maybe the laughter outweighs the stuff I’m not getting done.
The second one was an unexpected jolt. I don’t know what I was thinking. If it took four of us three hours to pick all of the strawberries, why did I think I could stem them by myself? After three hours and only four gallons done, I was ready to cry “uncle!” I got help from two unexpected sources. Christopher was very willing to come help. That was very cool. The other was my husband - who has his own to-do list that is as long as his arm. And, no, I have not added any to it. He does not have a honey-do list. But what an incredible blessing that was! What fun to stem strawberries with my husband, to talk about whatever happened to come across our hearts! I don’t know what I’m going to have to cut out of my life, but I’m not willing to miss out on that seemingly unimportant, yet incredibly valuable time when we talk about nothing and everything.
So I was reminded of another saying:
You only go around once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
I often pray for wisdom - when I’m teaching my children or doing the sabbath school lessons or talking with others about what I believe. But I’m convinced that I need to ask for wisdom in how I allocate my time. I need to be very jealous of my time for the good of my family, my marriage, and my relationship with my Savior. I need to think twice before volunteering to help. I need to count to ten before I take on another project. I need to stop and listen to God’s leading before I start down another hectic path, making another to-do list.
It’s this way: there are lots of things I can do. I’m interested in so many things. Life is so interesting and exciting. But! Just because I can do so many things doesn’t mean I should do so many things! Ron would just shudder to think of the plans and projects which germinated in my thoughts today. (I’m serious!! It was a very interesting day talking with a bunch of homeschooling moms!!) Would these projects be fun? Yes! Do I have time for them? No. Can I give up something else so I can do them? Probably not. Will it matter in the long run? Not likely. Maybe I should wear a sign around my neck which tells me to say “no” to all projects unless I can answer “yes” to all four of these questions!
We’ve just come through seven weeks of counting to Pentecost. Are we supposed to count each day? Or is it just that we’re to count to Pentecost? I don’t know that you can state either unequivocally and emphatically. But I do know that Moses asked God, “So teach us to number our days that we may get a heart of wisdom” (Psalm 90:12) and God says, “Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10a).
My goal is to be wise enough to be still, to have entire days when everything on my to-do list is totally focused on what’s profitable for the kingdom. What about you? What’s on your to-do list today?
July 2015
Mining for Gold
by Cynthia Saladin
It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. Proverbs 25:2
We were reading in Lamentations this week. Lamentations is only 5 chapters long. The first 4 chapters are acrostic poems. Chapters 1 and 2 are 66-line acrostic poems with 22 verses each. That means each verse starts with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 is a 66-line acrostic poem with 66 verses. That means that the first three verses begin with aleph, verses 4-6 begin with beth, and so on. Chapter 4 is a 44-line acrostic poem in 22 verses. Chapter 5 is 22 lines, but it is non-acrostic.
Jonathan has been memorizing Psalm 119, so he noticed that Lamentations 3:24 is similar to Psalm 119:57.
Lamentations 3:24: “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Psalm 119: 57: The LORD is my portion; I promise to keep your words.
So what? Lots of verses talk about God being our inheritance. But, here’s the thing: Both Lamentations 3 and Psalm 119 are acrostic poems, and these verses are within the heth letter of the acrostic. So we did some more digging.
Compare Lamentations 3:28-30 (Hebrew Yodh) with Psalm 119:76-79 (Hebrew Yodh): Sitting alone vs. God’s steadfast love comforting; humility and hope - God’s mercy and loving His laws; persecution.
Compare Lamentations 3:49: My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite with Psalm 119:136: My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law. These are both within the letter Pe of the acrostic poem.
Within the letter Qoph of the acrostic poems, both called on God for help.
Lamentations 3:55-57: I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea, ‘Do not close your ear to my cry for help!’ You came near when I called on you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’
Psalm 119:145-147: With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O LORD! I will keep your statutes. I call to you; save me, that I may observe your testimonies. I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words.
In the resh section, both ask God for redemption and vengeance against those who do them wrong. Lamentations 3:58-60 and Psalm 119:153-160.
Lamentations 3:61-63 and Psalm 119:161 (both in the sin and shin section) lament the taunts and persecution against them.
Why would Jeremiah be inspired to write a lament which mirrors Psalm 119, a psalm which celebrates the gift of God’s law? Maybe, just maybe, it’s because the lament is because of the consequences, the execution of justice from God’s hand, of breaking those very laws which God gave to His people, the laws which were confirmed in covenant. On one hand we have a psalm which rejoices at the blessings of following God’s laws. On the other hand, we have a lament which mourns the devastation and cursing which comes when God’s law is broken and rejected.
One more incredibly interesting coincidence: Psalm 119 has 176 verses. Lamentations has 22 verses, 22 verses, 66 verses, 22 verses, and 22 verses. That’s a total of 154 verses. It’s 22 verses shorter than Psalm 119. It’s written in a dirge pattern - the lament pattern. It has been cut short. Perhaps that’s why it only has 154 verses compared with the 176 verses in Psalm 119. Perhaps that’s also why chapter 5 in the only one which is not written as an acrostic. It doesn’t have the structure. It has chaos - just as God’s people do who have rejected His laws.
Incidentally, each stanza (each set of verses for each Hebrew letter) in the Psalm 119 acrostic is eight verses long. So aleph starts the first word in the first eight verses. Beth starts the first word in verses 9-16. And so on. Eight is a very interesting number in the Bible. Dad considers it God’s number. It’s the number after seven, which has been called the number of completeness or perfection. So eight is beyond completeness; it’s beyond perfection. I think that’s a very interesting commentary on the perfection of God’s gift of His law as expressed in Psalm 119.
It is also, then, a solemn warning in Lamentations to those who disregard God’s law and refuse to follow God’s commands and instructions. They will be cut off. Their lives will be cut short - if not in this physical life, then in eternity. What could have been, if they’d acknowledged God as their God and lived their lives accordingly, will not be. It is a lamentation - such a waste of potential.
Take some time to read Psalm 119 and Lamentations 3 side by side. Look at the contrast for each set within the acrostic poems. Remember that Psalm 119 devotes 8 verses to each letter and Lamentations devotes 3 verses to each letter. Meditate on what God has hidden in His word. May you be blessed as you uncover for yourself some incredible nuggets of truth.
Winston Churchill loved paraprosdokians, I.e., figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected. These are my favorites:
Where there's a will, I want to be in it.
The Hereafter
by Cynthia Saladin
While Mom and Dad were in Western Nebraska this past week, doing some carpentry work on the ranch, Dad had the opportunity to talk with my cousin Josh about some Biblical things. After having spent some time working on some of the machinery, they walked back to the house. Josh asked Mom if Dad had told her about the deep theological discussion they’d had. Well, it went something like this: Josh had scooted out from underneath the tractor and walked over to the tool bench. He turned to Dad and said, “I believe in the hereafter.” Dad said, “Yeah.” Josh said, “Yeah. I don’t remember what I came here after - the wrench or the screw driver.”
It makes a funny story, but I was thinking about our daily chores - you know, the ones that have to be done - and our eternal perspective. We have to mow the lawn, do the laundry, clean the house, fix meals, go grocery shopping, pay the bills . . . Well, you get the picture. We have a lot to do. It’s called life.
Still, it’s incredibly easy to let our eyes become focused on the here and now, rather than the hereafter. Because there really is a hereafter. It’s called God’s kingdom. And God is preparing a place for His people in His kingdom. There’s a job to be done that you will be perfectly suited to do - once you’ve undergone your pre-job training here and now.
And yet . . . sometimes we focus on our training woes without realizing their molding and purifying values.
Francesca Battistelli sings it very well in her song, ”Strangely Dim.”
I've got all these plans piled up sky high
A thousand dreams on hold and I don't know why,
I got a front row seat to the longest wait
And I just can't see past the things I pray today.
But when I fix my eyes on all that You are
Then every doubt I feel deep in my heart grows strangely dim.
All my worries fade and fall to the ground
Cause when I seek Your face and don't look around
Any place I'm in grows strangely dim.
Sometimes where I stand on this narrow road
Is in a raging storm or a valley low - But oh oh oh oh oh oh
But when I fix my eyes on all that You are
Then every doubt I feel deep in my heart grows strangely dim.
All my worries fade and fall to the ground
Cause when I seek Your face and don't look around
Any place I'm in grows strangely dim.
I don't know, I don't know what tomorrow may hold;
But I know, but I know that You're holding it all
So no matter what may come
I'm gonna fix my eyes on all that You are
'Til every doubt I feel deep in my heart grows strangely dim
Let all my worries fade and fall to the ground
I'm gonna seek Your face and not look around
Til the place I'm in grows strangely, strangely, strangely dim.
Maybe I like this song so well because it reminds me of one of my favorites verses, 2 Corinthians 4:16-17: So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
As we fix our eyes on God and the goal set before us, we are able to work with joyfulness and peacefulness . . . even if we walk into the kitchen and think to ourselves, “Now what was I here after?”
Mining for Gold
by Cynthia Saladin
It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out. Proverbs 25:2
We were reading in Lamentations this week. Lamentations is only 5 chapters long. The first 4 chapters are acrostic poems. Chapters 1 and 2 are 66-line acrostic poems with 22 verses each. That means each verse starts with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Chapter 3 is a 66-line acrostic poem with 66 verses. That means that the first three verses begin with aleph, verses 4-6 begin with beth, and so on. Chapter 4 is a 44-line acrostic poem in 22 verses. Chapter 5 is 22 lines, but it is non-acrostic.
Jonathan has been memorizing Psalm 119, so he noticed that Lamentations 3:24 is similar to Psalm 119:57.
Lamentations 3:24: “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”
Psalm 119: 57: The LORD is my portion; I promise to keep your words.
So what? Lots of verses talk about God being our inheritance. But, here’s the thing: Both Lamentations 3 and Psalm 119 are acrostic poems, and these verses are within the heth letter of the acrostic. So we did some more digging.
Compare Lamentations 3:28-30 (Hebrew Yodh) with Psalm 119:76-79 (Hebrew Yodh): Sitting alone vs. God’s steadfast love comforting; humility and hope - God’s mercy and loving His laws; persecution.
Compare Lamentations 3:49: My eyes will flow without ceasing, without respite with Psalm 119:136: My eyes shed streams of tears, because people do not keep your law. These are both within the letter Pe of the acrostic poem.
Within the letter Qoph of the acrostic poems, both called on God for help.
Lamentations 3:55-57: I called on your name, O LORD, from the depths of the pit; you heard my plea, ‘Do not close your ear to my cry for help!’ You came near when I called on you; you said, ‘Do not fear!’
Psalm 119:145-147: With my whole heart I cry; answer me, O LORD! I will keep your statutes. I call to you; save me, that I may observe your testimonies. I rise before dawn and cry for help; I hope in your words.
In the resh section, both ask God for redemption and vengeance against those who do them wrong. Lamentations 3:58-60 and Psalm 119:153-160.
Lamentations 3:61-63 and Psalm 119:161 (both in the sin and shin section) lament the taunts and persecution against them.
Why would Jeremiah be inspired to write a lament which mirrors Psalm 119, a psalm which celebrates the gift of God’s law? Maybe, just maybe, it’s because the lament is because of the consequences, the execution of justice from God’s hand, of breaking those very laws which God gave to His people, the laws which were confirmed in covenant. On one hand we have a psalm which rejoices at the blessings of following God’s laws. On the other hand, we have a lament which mourns the devastation and cursing which comes when God’s law is broken and rejected.
One more incredibly interesting coincidence: Psalm 119 has 176 verses. Lamentations has 22 verses, 22 verses, 66 verses, 22 verses, and 22 verses. That’s a total of 154 verses. It’s 22 verses shorter than Psalm 119. It’s written in a dirge pattern - the lament pattern. It has been cut short. Perhaps that’s why it only has 154 verses compared with the 176 verses in Psalm 119. Perhaps that’s also why chapter 5 in the only one which is not written as an acrostic. It doesn’t have the structure. It has chaos - just as God’s people do who have rejected His laws.
Incidentally, each stanza (each set of verses for each Hebrew letter) in the Psalm 119 acrostic is eight verses long. So aleph starts the first word in the first eight verses. Beth starts the first word in verses 9-16. And so on. Eight is a very interesting number in the Bible. Dad considers it God’s number. It’s the number after seven, which has been called the number of completeness or perfection. So eight is beyond completeness; it’s beyond perfection. I think that’s a very interesting commentary on the perfection of God’s gift of His law as expressed in Psalm 119.
It is also, then, a solemn warning in Lamentations to those who disregard God’s law and refuse to follow God’s commands and instructions. They will be cut off. Their lives will be cut short - if not in this physical life, then in eternity. What could have been, if they’d acknowledged God as their God and lived their lives accordingly, will not be. It is a lamentation - such a waste of potential.
Take some time to read Psalm 119 and Lamentations 3 side by side. Look at the contrast for each set within the acrostic poems. Remember that Psalm 119 devotes 8 verses to each letter and Lamentations devotes 3 verses to each letter. Meditate on what God has hidden in His word. May you be blessed as you uncover for yourself some incredible nuggets of truth.
Winston Churchill loved paraprosdokians, I.e., figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected. These are my favorites:
Where there's a will, I want to be in it.
- The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it's still on my list.
- Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.
- If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
- I thought I wanted a career. Turns out, I just wanted pay checks.
- In filling out an application, where it says, 'In case of emergency, notify:' I put "DOCTOR."
- I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
- You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.
The Hereafter
by Cynthia Saladin
While Mom and Dad were in Western Nebraska this past week, doing some carpentry work on the ranch, Dad had the opportunity to talk with my cousin Josh about some Biblical things. After having spent some time working on some of the machinery, they walked back to the house. Josh asked Mom if Dad had told her about the deep theological discussion they’d had. Well, it went something like this: Josh had scooted out from underneath the tractor and walked over to the tool bench. He turned to Dad and said, “I believe in the hereafter.” Dad said, “Yeah.” Josh said, “Yeah. I don’t remember what I came here after - the wrench or the screw driver.”
It makes a funny story, but I was thinking about our daily chores - you know, the ones that have to be done - and our eternal perspective. We have to mow the lawn, do the laundry, clean the house, fix meals, go grocery shopping, pay the bills . . . Well, you get the picture. We have a lot to do. It’s called life.
Still, it’s incredibly easy to let our eyes become focused on the here and now, rather than the hereafter. Because there really is a hereafter. It’s called God’s kingdom. And God is preparing a place for His people in His kingdom. There’s a job to be done that you will be perfectly suited to do - once you’ve undergone your pre-job training here and now.
And yet . . . sometimes we focus on our training woes without realizing their molding and purifying values.
Francesca Battistelli sings it very well in her song, ”Strangely Dim.”
I've got all these plans piled up sky high
A thousand dreams on hold and I don't know why,
I got a front row seat to the longest wait
And I just can't see past the things I pray today.
But when I fix my eyes on all that You are
Then every doubt I feel deep in my heart grows strangely dim.
All my worries fade and fall to the ground
Cause when I seek Your face and don't look around
Any place I'm in grows strangely dim.
Sometimes where I stand on this narrow road
Is in a raging storm or a valley low - But oh oh oh oh oh oh
But when I fix my eyes on all that You are
Then every doubt I feel deep in my heart grows strangely dim.
All my worries fade and fall to the ground
Cause when I seek Your face and don't look around
Any place I'm in grows strangely dim.
I don't know, I don't know what tomorrow may hold;
But I know, but I know that You're holding it all
So no matter what may come
I'm gonna fix my eyes on all that You are
'Til every doubt I feel deep in my heart grows strangely dim
Let all my worries fade and fall to the ground
I'm gonna seek Your face and not look around
Til the place I'm in grows strangely, strangely, strangely dim.
Maybe I like this song so well because it reminds me of one of my favorites verses, 2 Corinthians 4:16-17: So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
As we fix our eyes on God and the goal set before us, we are able to work with joyfulness and peacefulness . . . even if we walk into the kitchen and think to ourselves, “Now what was I here after?”
August 2015
God’s Purpose for Mankind by Jerry Laws
Have you ever given much thought to this question of why our God felt the need to create mankind and ultimately put His beloved Son through so much pain? There are many different opinions and answers that people have come up with, some may be partially true and some are not scriptural. In our mental outlook we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin as the only explanation as to why Jesus Christ came, and as the explanation of the grief and sorrow in life.
I have been reading a small daily devotional study guide that has given me some insight into this question and an answer. It is titled “My Utmost For His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. It lists by date some 365 days of the year and each day a separate Scripture for us to focus upon.
For example, on May 14, we are given the answer to what God’s ultimate purpose for all mankind is and it’s found in 2 Corinthians 4:11: “That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” Notice, it says nothing about when we get to Heaven or gain eternal life; Jesus Christ is our eternal life (Romans 6-23) and He is alive right now and busy doing God’s business of revealing His very life within us and this keeps us close to the Father. And then it closes the brief daily discussion with “Keep your soul fit to manifest the life of the Son of God. Never live on memories; let the word of God be always living and active in you.”
Then on another date, January 5, there is an expansion of this same thought but referring to John 13:36, with an elaborating sentence, “No matter what changes God has wrought in you never rely on them, build only on a Person the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit He gives: Receive ye the Holy Ghost—the idea is that of invasion.
There is only one lodestar now, the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe it, meditate upon it, practice it.
Most of us are familiar with Philippians 2:12-13, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” The June 6 entry helped me understand this verse a little better. You have to work out with concentration and care what God works in; not work your own salvation but work it out, while you base resolutely in unshaken faith on the complete perfect Redemption of the Lord. As you do this, you do not bring an opposed will to God’s will. God’s will is your will and your natural choices are along the line of God’s will, and the life is as natural as breathing. God is the source of your will; therefore you are able to work out His will.
The June 23 entry gives us different but more information on preparation for receiving the Life line from Jesus Christ. It focuses our attention on Isaiah 53:3, “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” We are not acquainted with grief in the same way in which Our Lord was acquainted with it; we endure it, we get through it, but we do not become intimate with it. We have to recognize that sin is a fact, not a defect; sin is red-handed mutiny against God. Either God or sin must die in my life. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue. If sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is no possible ultimate but that. The climax of sin is that it crucified Jesus Christ, and what was true in the history of God on earth will be true in your history and in mine.
Paul spoke of co-crucifixion in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself for me.”
I have just mentioned 4 of the 365 daily devotions recorded in Oswald Chambers work, but it is enough to get the flavor of the direction of his focus. He is trying to teach us that we must learn to get out of the way and allow Jesus Christ Himself to do His work in us because that is what the His Father has designed, and as we accomplish this fact, we will become more and more at One with the Father and His Son, fulfilling Jesus request to His Father. (See John 17:22-26.)
He continually makes reference to the distinction between the natural man and the Spiritual man in one form or another, trying to show us we all are of the natural and Jesus Christ is of the Spirit. And then he adds 1st Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” A mind expanding statement!
Paul clearly mentions in Colossians 1:27, the mystery of the Gospel is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Let that fact sink in.
2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us of the progressive nature of Jesus Christ’s glory and how it changes us as we yield to His manifesting His very Life in us;. “But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit.” This is the ultimate goal for all believers in His Name because it is the Father’s purpose for creating mankind.
Why are they called "stands" when they are made for sitting?
Why is it called "after dark" when it really is "after light"?
Doesn't "expecting the unexpected" make the unexpected expected?
Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?
If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know?
Floating
by Cynthia Saladin
I’ve heard tell of people who float through life, but I’ve never been one of them. I make my lists. I chain errands together. I organize my activities to best utilize my time. I plan my days. But I don’t float.
So it was unusual that I would have a set of three floating adventures within one week! The first was something I’d always thought looked so goofy - floating on a pool mattress in the swimming pool. But I found myself with the kids in the pool last week. Floating on the mattress actually started out as the challenge of getting on the stupid thing. After being dumped a few times as the mattress flipped, I settled back to savor the moment of having achieved victory. And now I know why those floating mattresses are so popular. What a relaxing, calming experience!! I may have to do that again . . . soon!!
The second floating adventure was one of those bucket-list, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities: a hot air balloon ride. I wasn’t sure how I’d react to being up in the balloon because I’m paralyzed by heights. I don’t want to be so terrified, but that’s the way it is. So I don’t do heights. Still, airplanes don’t bother me. The viewing deck of the Hancock Building in Chicago doesn’t bother me. So I was willing to take a chance!! If you ever have the opportunity to take a hot air
balloon ride, I’d highly recommend it. What a fantastic sensation of the earth moving away beneath you while you gently gain altitude. We had a perfect day so that even the landing was amazingly smooth. There was no bouncing and tipping over. It was all just incredibly calming and relaxing and fun!
The third floating experience was on our pond. Ron bought a pedalboat/paddleboat as an anniversary present. I’ve paddleboated before, but it was a lot of fun to do so on our own property! Since we don’t own another boat, it’s been a long time since I’ve been slowly, casually boating.
Because I had three novel floating adventures so close together, I began considering them, thinking about their intersection with this moment in my life. As I thought about them, I realized that all three events required me to suspend the completion of tasks on my to-do list. None of the three fell within the category of things which had to be done. All three were just simply fun, simply relaxing, simply quiet.
I couldn’t help thinking of “quiet” verses.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother . . . (Psalm 131:2).
For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).
I was struck by the contrast of this particular verse in Isaiah 30 with what is normal life in today’s world. Our lives are full of distressing world events, relational conflicts, and personal tragedies. We feel stress about what is in front of us, the pain around us, the fallenness of the world in which we live. That’s been particularly true in my family: as we’ve done our daily family Bible study through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel over the past few months, we’ve been sobered by the similarities between Judah’s perversion, rebellion against God, idolatry and violence and
what we see around us. If God punished them for their wickedness, how can the U.S. hope to escape? It is a grievous thing, a stressful thing. I’ve felt its weight.
So God sent me some floating. It’s almost as if God was reminding me . . .
In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world (John 16:33).
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).
Perhaps, just perhaps, God sandwiched the hot air balloon in-between the pool mattress and the paddleboat so I wouldn’t miss the lesson. And once I saw the lesson, perhaps the mattress and the paddleboat are there, on my property, as a reminder that my rest, my quietness, my peace is within my reach - as close as putting my eyes back on my God, instead of the things around me.
A final note: as I scribe these thought, I’m sitting in a chaotic, noisy place - the very antithesis of quiet and peace and rest - Six Flags. And yet, as I write, I’m reminded that I can find quietness and peace even in the midst of chaos and noise. My relationship with my God can transcend whatever I’m experiencing and wherever I am. But sometimes He sends pool mattresses, hot air balloons, and paddleboats to remind me.
Once you lick the frosting off a cupcake
it becomes a muffin and muffins are healthy;
You’re welcome.
Enough
by Cynthia Saladin
. . . Three things are never satisfied; four never say, “Enough”: Sheol, the barren womb, the land never satisfied with water, and the fire that never says, “Enough.” (Proverbs 30:15b-16)
I could add some things to that list: a puppy who wants to play; a teenager at Six Flags. In fact, many people want more: more money, more things, more time. They rarely say, “Enough.” So I started thinking about the concept of enough.
Last year, we had the best garden we’d ever had! The weeds were under control. The harvest was bountiful. We were so grateful for the abundant blessings from God! This year I’ve had a constant battle with weeds. The very wet weather followed by very hot temperatures has not been conducive to prolific plants. And yet . . . we’ve had enough.
It occurred to me that last summer was a frantically busy summer. I would harvest in the morning and spend the rest of the day processing the harvest. This year, I’m not spending nearly as much time processing food. But still, we have enough.
I started thinking: recognizing when you have enough is a blessing from God. For example, I picked wild blackberries twice. The first time I picked enough to make some wild blackberry jelly. I didn’t make oodles and gobs of jelly, but it was enough. The second time I made a blackberry cobbler for church. Now, I know I could’ve picked again, but it wasn’t necessary. I had enough.
Similarly, Ron has been mowing the field. Jonathan sweeps the grass into piles once it’s dry. Then Jonathan and I pick up the hay to put on the garden. I have more than ten pick-up loads waiting to be spread on the garden. I told Jonathan we have enough hay.
I had Ron till under part of the strawberry patch this summer. We don’t need it to be so large. We could let the strawberries spread to cover the whole garden, but we have a large enough patch.
It’s a blessing to realize you have enough. It’s a point of freedom to know that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should or have to do something, even if it’s picking blackberries or growing strawberries. I think it’s the secret of learning to be content with what you have (Philippians 4:11-12), with the substance, the fullness, the extent of the blessings from God. You don’t, I don’t, necessarily need more.
Then there’s this verse, 1 Timothy 6:6-8: Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
We sometimes think that the definition of God’s blessing means a cup which overflows. I’m learning that God’s blessing can also mean a cup that has just enough. Maybe serving and loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength is partly achieved in accurately discerning when enough is enough in my daily activities.
'We never know whom we marry, we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being the enormous thing it is means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.’ Stanley Hauerwas
"The grass isn't greener on the other side. It's greener where you water it.”
A Stony Heart by Cynthia Saladin
And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26
What are stones good for? What can you use them for? They make good buildings, fences, roads, bridge supports, mountains. But stones are not very good at absorbing water. They don’t respond well to animals looking for a place to hide. They don’t make very good pillows - even if Jacob tried. And stones don’t make very good hearts.
Well, duh! I knew that already! Nobody has a heart of stone - unless we’re talking about some of the idols that the pagan nations worshipped. So what in the world is this verse talking about? What does a stony heart look like? Well, just like a stone is not good at absorbing water, a stony heart is one that doesn’t let God in. That’s the heart which God is going to replace in the person who is not willing to submit their will, their desires, and their very lives to God’s will and God’s desire for their lives.
Let me remind you that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. You can’t rely on your own evaluation of whether your heart is stony or not. You have to rely on the Bible, on the Holy Spirit to convict you, prayer, and fellow believers to have the love and courage to tell you where you’re not letting God into your life! If you don’t spend time seeking God, it’s easy to think you’re an o.k. person. After all, you’ve never murdered anyone. You are generous and good. But the problem is, God doesn’t judge you with a balance scale. He judges you based on the relationship you have with Him. If you don’t have the Son, you don’t have anything! To put it in other terms, if you don’t have the Son, you still have a stony heart.
How’s your heart?
Final Thought: I wonder if clouds ever look down on us and say, "Hey, that one looks like an idiot!” (cybersalt.org)
God’s Purpose for Mankind by Jerry Laws
Have you ever given much thought to this question of why our God felt the need to create mankind and ultimately put His beloved Son through so much pain? There are many different opinions and answers that people have come up with, some may be partially true and some are not scriptural. In our mental outlook we have to reconcile ourselves to the fact of sin as the only explanation as to why Jesus Christ came, and as the explanation of the grief and sorrow in life.
I have been reading a small daily devotional study guide that has given me some insight into this question and an answer. It is titled “My Utmost For His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. It lists by date some 365 days of the year and each day a separate Scripture for us to focus upon.
For example, on May 14, we are given the answer to what God’s ultimate purpose for all mankind is and it’s found in 2 Corinthians 4:11: “That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh.” Notice, it says nothing about when we get to Heaven or gain eternal life; Jesus Christ is our eternal life (Romans 6-23) and He is alive right now and busy doing God’s business of revealing His very life within us and this keeps us close to the Father. And then it closes the brief daily discussion with “Keep your soul fit to manifest the life of the Son of God. Never live on memories; let the word of God be always living and active in you.”
Then on another date, January 5, there is an expansion of this same thought but referring to John 13:36, with an elaborating sentence, “No matter what changes God has wrought in you never rely on them, build only on a Person the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Spirit He gives: Receive ye the Holy Ghost—the idea is that of invasion.
There is only one lodestar now, the Lord Jesus Christ. Believe it, meditate upon it, practice it.
Most of us are familiar with Philippians 2:12-13, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” The June 6 entry helped me understand this verse a little better. You have to work out with concentration and care what God works in; not work your own salvation but work it out, while you base resolutely in unshaken faith on the complete perfect Redemption of the Lord. As you do this, you do not bring an opposed will to God’s will. God’s will is your will and your natural choices are along the line of God’s will, and the life is as natural as breathing. God is the source of your will; therefore you are able to work out His will.
The June 23 entry gives us different but more information on preparation for receiving the Life line from Jesus Christ. It focuses our attention on Isaiah 53:3, “A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” We are not acquainted with grief in the same way in which Our Lord was acquainted with it; we endure it, we get through it, but we do not become intimate with it. We have to recognize that sin is a fact, not a defect; sin is red-handed mutiny against God. Either God or sin must die in my life. The New Testament brings us right down to this one issue. If sin rules in me, God’s life in me will be killed; if God rules in me, sin in me will be killed. There is no possible ultimate but that. The climax of sin is that it crucified Jesus Christ, and what was true in the history of God on earth will be true in your history and in mine.
Paul spoke of co-crucifixion in Galatians 2:20, “I have been crucified with Christ and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered Himself for me.”
I have just mentioned 4 of the 365 daily devotions recorded in Oswald Chambers work, but it is enough to get the flavor of the direction of his focus. He is trying to teach us that we must learn to get out of the way and allow Jesus Christ Himself to do His work in us because that is what the His Father has designed, and as we accomplish this fact, we will become more and more at One with the Father and His Son, fulfilling Jesus request to His Father. (See John 17:22-26.)
He continually makes reference to the distinction between the natural man and the Spiritual man in one form or another, trying to show us we all are of the natural and Jesus Christ is of the Spirit. And then he adds 1st Corinthians 3:16, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you?” A mind expanding statement!
Paul clearly mentions in Colossians 1:27, the mystery of the Gospel is “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” Let that fact sink in.
2 Corinthians 3:18 tells us of the progressive nature of Jesus Christ’s glory and how it changes us as we yield to His manifesting His very Life in us;. “But we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord the Spirit.” This is the ultimate goal for all believers in His Name because it is the Father’s purpose for creating mankind.
Why are they called "stands" when they are made for sitting?
Why is it called "after dark" when it really is "after light"?
Doesn't "expecting the unexpected" make the unexpected expected?
Why is the third hand on the watch called the second hand?
If a word is misspelled in the dictionary, how would we ever know?
Floating
by Cynthia Saladin
I’ve heard tell of people who float through life, but I’ve never been one of them. I make my lists. I chain errands together. I organize my activities to best utilize my time. I plan my days. But I don’t float.
So it was unusual that I would have a set of three floating adventures within one week! The first was something I’d always thought looked so goofy - floating on a pool mattress in the swimming pool. But I found myself with the kids in the pool last week. Floating on the mattress actually started out as the challenge of getting on the stupid thing. After being dumped a few times as the mattress flipped, I settled back to savor the moment of having achieved victory. And now I know why those floating mattresses are so popular. What a relaxing, calming experience!! I may have to do that again . . . soon!!
The second floating adventure was one of those bucket-list, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities: a hot air balloon ride. I wasn’t sure how I’d react to being up in the balloon because I’m paralyzed by heights. I don’t want to be so terrified, but that’s the way it is. So I don’t do heights. Still, airplanes don’t bother me. The viewing deck of the Hancock Building in Chicago doesn’t bother me. So I was willing to take a chance!! If you ever have the opportunity to take a hot air
balloon ride, I’d highly recommend it. What a fantastic sensation of the earth moving away beneath you while you gently gain altitude. We had a perfect day so that even the landing was amazingly smooth. There was no bouncing and tipping over. It was all just incredibly calming and relaxing and fun!
The third floating experience was on our pond. Ron bought a pedalboat/paddleboat as an anniversary present. I’ve paddleboated before, but it was a lot of fun to do so on our own property! Since we don’t own another boat, it’s been a long time since I’ve been slowly, casually boating.
Because I had three novel floating adventures so close together, I began considering them, thinking about their intersection with this moment in my life. As I thought about them, I realized that all three events required me to suspend the completion of tasks on my to-do list. None of the three fell within the category of things which had to be done. All three were just simply fun, simply relaxing, simply quiet.
I couldn’t help thinking of “quiet” verses.
But I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother . . . (Psalm 131:2).
For thus said the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel, “In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength” (Isaiah 30:15).
I was struck by the contrast of this particular verse in Isaiah 30 with what is normal life in today’s world. Our lives are full of distressing world events, relational conflicts, and personal tragedies. We feel stress about what is in front of us, the pain around us, the fallenness of the world in which we live. That’s been particularly true in my family: as we’ve done our daily family Bible study through Isaiah, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel over the past few months, we’ve been sobered by the similarities between Judah’s perversion, rebellion against God, idolatry and violence and
what we see around us. If God punished them for their wickedness, how can the U.S. hope to escape? It is a grievous thing, a stressful thing. I’ve felt its weight.
So God sent me some floating. It’s almost as if God was reminding me . . .
In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world (John 16:33).
Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light (Matthew 11:28-30).
Perhaps, just perhaps, God sandwiched the hot air balloon in-between the pool mattress and the paddleboat so I wouldn’t miss the lesson. And once I saw the lesson, perhaps the mattress and the paddleboat are there, on my property, as a reminder that my rest, my quietness, my peace is within my reach - as close as putting my eyes back on my God, instead of the things around me.
A final note: as I scribe these thought, I’m sitting in a chaotic, noisy place - the very antithesis of quiet and peace and rest - Six Flags. And yet, as I write, I’m reminded that I can find quietness and peace even in the midst of chaos and noise. My relationship with my God can transcend whatever I’m experiencing and wherever I am. But sometimes He sends pool mattresses, hot air balloons, and paddleboats to remind me.
Once you lick the frosting off a cupcake
it becomes a muffin and muffins are healthy;
You’re welcome.
Enough
by Cynthia Saladin
. . . Three things are never satisfied; four never say, “Enough”: Sheol, the barren womb, the land never satisfied with water, and the fire that never says, “Enough.” (Proverbs 30:15b-16)
I could add some things to that list: a puppy who wants to play; a teenager at Six Flags. In fact, many people want more: more money, more things, more time. They rarely say, “Enough.” So I started thinking about the concept of enough.
Last year, we had the best garden we’d ever had! The weeds were under control. The harvest was bountiful. We were so grateful for the abundant blessings from God! This year I’ve had a constant battle with weeds. The very wet weather followed by very hot temperatures has not been conducive to prolific plants. And yet . . . we’ve had enough.
It occurred to me that last summer was a frantically busy summer. I would harvest in the morning and spend the rest of the day processing the harvest. This year, I’m not spending nearly as much time processing food. But still, we have enough.
I started thinking: recognizing when you have enough is a blessing from God. For example, I picked wild blackberries twice. The first time I picked enough to make some wild blackberry jelly. I didn’t make oodles and gobs of jelly, but it was enough. The second time I made a blackberry cobbler for church. Now, I know I could’ve picked again, but it wasn’t necessary. I had enough.
Similarly, Ron has been mowing the field. Jonathan sweeps the grass into piles once it’s dry. Then Jonathan and I pick up the hay to put on the garden. I have more than ten pick-up loads waiting to be spread on the garden. I told Jonathan we have enough hay.
I had Ron till under part of the strawberry patch this summer. We don’t need it to be so large. We could let the strawberries spread to cover the whole garden, but we have a large enough patch.
It’s a blessing to realize you have enough. It’s a point of freedom to know that just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should or have to do something, even if it’s picking blackberries or growing strawberries. I think it’s the secret of learning to be content with what you have (Philippians 4:11-12), with the substance, the fullness, the extent of the blessings from God. You don’t, I don’t, necessarily need more.
Then there’s this verse, 1 Timothy 6:6-8: Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content.
We sometimes think that the definition of God’s blessing means a cup which overflows. I’m learning that God’s blessing can also mean a cup that has just enough. Maybe serving and loving God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength is partly achieved in accurately discerning when enough is enough in my daily activities.
'We never know whom we marry, we just think we do. Or even if we first marry the right person, just give it a while and he or she will change. For marriage, being the enormous thing it is means we are not the same person after we have entered it. The primary problem is learning how to love and care for the stranger to whom you find yourself married.’ Stanley Hauerwas
"The grass isn't greener on the other side. It's greener where you water it.”
A Stony Heart by Cynthia Saladin
And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Ezekiel 36:26
What are stones good for? What can you use them for? They make good buildings, fences, roads, bridge supports, mountains. But stones are not very good at absorbing water. They don’t respond well to animals looking for a place to hide. They don’t make very good pillows - even if Jacob tried. And stones don’t make very good hearts.
Well, duh! I knew that already! Nobody has a heart of stone - unless we’re talking about some of the idols that the pagan nations worshipped. So what in the world is this verse talking about? What does a stony heart look like? Well, just like a stone is not good at absorbing water, a stony heart is one that doesn’t let God in. That’s the heart which God is going to replace in the person who is not willing to submit their will, their desires, and their very lives to God’s will and God’s desire for their lives.
Let me remind you that the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked. You can’t rely on your own evaluation of whether your heart is stony or not. You have to rely on the Bible, on the Holy Spirit to convict you, prayer, and fellow believers to have the love and courage to tell you where you’re not letting God into your life! If you don’t spend time seeking God, it’s easy to think you’re an o.k. person. After all, you’ve never murdered anyone. You are generous and good. But the problem is, God doesn’t judge you with a balance scale. He judges you based on the relationship you have with Him. If you don’t have the Son, you don’t have anything! To put it in other terms, if you don’t have the Son, you still have a stony heart.
How’s your heart?
Final Thought: I wonder if clouds ever look down on us and say, "Hey, that one looks like an idiot!” (cybersalt.org)
September 2015
All Things Are Ready - Come to the Feast!
by Cynthia Saladin
“ . . . and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days” (Leviticus 23:40).
As we get ready to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, I pray that you will worship the King, the LORD of hosts, with joy and gladness for the abundance of all things. May you come home refreshed and revived, filled with the peace which comes from fellowshipping with God for eight days at His feasts! Be blessed, all you saints of the Most High, and go with God!
The Pessimist complains about the wind.
The Optimist expects it to change.
The Leader adjusts the sails.
Isaiah’s Prophecy of Messiah’s Birth
by Bill Rollins
Sometimes we have the inclination to read that portion of our Bibles from Matthew through Revelation as though it were a separate part of our Bibles. We have called it the “New Testament,” or more correctly, the “New Covenant.” The reality is, of course, that the entirety of our Bible is one complete book that we have received from our Father and can be considered fully integrated. We love this book and read its instructions faithfully. It is the word of God!
Having said this, let me try to show how a very important piece of the Gospel is found imbedded in the prophetic book of Isaiah. My hope in showing this is that you may be inspired to seek other instances of correlation and integration within the scriptures. I will begin by citing a few examples of this integration with which we may already be familiar.
First: In the three-fold temptation of the Messiah (in Matthew 4:1-11), we are aware that the way out of the temptations came from Yashuah responding by quoting the Torah, namely Deuteronomy 6 and 8. His defense of the temptations was not some new thing.
Second: In Matthew 26:11, after the anointing of Yashuah, He chastised the disciples by saying, “The poor you will always have with you.” This is almost a direct quote from Deut. 15:11, “There will always be poor people in the land.”
Third: During the “cleansing of the temple” in Matthew 21, Yashuah was fulfilling a prophecy found in Zechariah 14:21, “On that day there will no longer be a merchant in the house of YHVH of Hosts.” (Note: Some translations have the word “Canaanite.” However, the word Canaanite is the word “merchant” in Hebrew.) He was cleansing the Temple of the “merchants.”
There are many other examples of this, but I would like to consider one that perhaps we have not examined before.
We are all familiar with the events surrounding the birth of the Messiah. The full account is found in Luke 2:1-40. After we read of the birth of the Messiah in verses 1 through 7, we are told of an angel of YHVH appearing to the shepherds. He brought “good news of great joy.” So the Gospel was first preached to the shepherds by the angel.
“Suddenly a great company of heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God . . .” (verse 13). The shepherds then went to see “this that had happened,” and they then spread the word concerning the child. The shepherds were the second to preach this “good news/gospel” and “all who heard it were amazed” (verses 15-18). We are told specifically that there were two people who received this good news: Simeon and Anna (see verses 25-38). I’m sure there were many more people who heard what the shepherds had to say and yet we are told the names of only two. Could these two individuals be significant? Well, I guess that’s the point of this article. What then is the significance?
“Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.” Wow! The Holy Spirit was upon this man. The Holy Spirit revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. He no doubt heard the “rumor” spread by the shepherds, and so the Holy Spirit moved him to go into the temple courts in order to hold the baby and cause Joseph and Mary to “marvel at what was said about Him.” What was he waiting for? The consolation of Israel!! He knew that there was coming one who would be the comfort of his people.
“There was also a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem” (verses 36-38).
We have two individuals, Simeon, who was looking for the consolation (i.e. comfort) of Israel and the other, Anna, who preached to those seeking the redemption of Jerusalem. Let us take a look at a prophecy that, in my estimation, is hidden in the 52 chapter of the book of Isaiah, starting in verse 7.
How beautiful on the mountains
Are the feet of those who bring good news,
Who proclaim peace,
Who bring good tidings,
Who proclaim salvation,
Who say to Zion,
“your God reigns!”
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;
Together they shout for joy,
When YHVH returns to Zion,
They will see it with their own eyes.
Burst into songs of joy together,
You ruins of Jerusalem,
For YHVH has comforted His people,
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
It was the angel whose beautiful feet brought the “good news” and who proclaimed peace, who brought good tidings and proclaimed the Savior.
It was the shepherds who were the “watchmen” (watching the flocks) who lifted up their voices and shouted for joy.
It was the people of Jerusalem who heard the shepherds (the ruins of Jerusalem) who were amazed.
It was Simeon who received the revelation that YHVH would console (comfort) His people.
It was Anna who recognized the redemption of Jerusalem had come!
I like to say that the things we read in the Apostolic writings were not drawn out of thin air. They were told long ago in the Hebrew scriptures. And so the details surrounding Messiah’s birth were foretold long before by the prophet Isaiah. The same Isaiah foretold of Messiah’s virgin birth (see Is. 7:14). The same Isaiah told of a light dawning out of darkness in Galilee of the Gentiles (see Isaiah 9:1-2). The same Isaiah told of a child being born who would bear the government of God upon His shoulders (see Isaiah 9:6). The same Isaiah foretold that a shoot would come up from the stump of Jesse, a Branch who would bear fruit (see Isaiah 11:1).
I am amazed, sometimes, at the details given beforehand by the pen of the prophets!
May you, likewise, be continually edified by the intricacies of the word of God!
Change by Cynthia Saladin
None of us likes change, but it’s a reality of life in this mortal flesh. We are constantly changing, and everything around us is changing. As we head towards the end of August, the season is changing. We feel summer losing its grip; autumn is on the doorstep. The leaves will be changing. The garden will slow down. The grass doesn’t grow as fast. The dogs are more spry because the cooler temperatures invigorate them! And we keep hoping that Pepper will change - less rambunctious and willing to attack, more calm and pleasant to be around.
Some changes are good (Changing the oil in the car is a good thing.), and some are not so good (My labs have more and more white on their muzzles.). Perhaps the part of change which we like the least is that which leads to death. I don’t like thinking about the death of my dogs. I don’t like the declining health of family and friends. I don’t like the phone calls which tell me a good friend is gone, like Dad called this week. There is now a void. There’s something missing in my life, something that I had access to just a couple of weeks ago.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV).
I am looking forward to the time when change is only beautiful. I am looking forward to the time when change doesn’t carry with it the overtone of coming death. I’m looking forward to the time when change doesn’t mean pain and loss. I’m looking forward to eternity and seeing again those who have already died in the Lord.
Parting Thought: Why is it called "after dark" when it really is "after light"?
All Things Are Ready - Come to the Feast!
by Cynthia Saladin
“ . . . and you shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days” (Leviticus 23:40).
As we get ready to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, I pray that you will worship the King, the LORD of hosts, with joy and gladness for the abundance of all things. May you come home refreshed and revived, filled with the peace which comes from fellowshipping with God for eight days at His feasts! Be blessed, all you saints of the Most High, and go with God!
The Pessimist complains about the wind.
The Optimist expects it to change.
The Leader adjusts the sails.
Isaiah’s Prophecy of Messiah’s Birth
by Bill Rollins
Sometimes we have the inclination to read that portion of our Bibles from Matthew through Revelation as though it were a separate part of our Bibles. We have called it the “New Testament,” or more correctly, the “New Covenant.” The reality is, of course, that the entirety of our Bible is one complete book that we have received from our Father and can be considered fully integrated. We love this book and read its instructions faithfully. It is the word of God!
Having said this, let me try to show how a very important piece of the Gospel is found imbedded in the prophetic book of Isaiah. My hope in showing this is that you may be inspired to seek other instances of correlation and integration within the scriptures. I will begin by citing a few examples of this integration with which we may already be familiar.
First: In the three-fold temptation of the Messiah (in Matthew 4:1-11), we are aware that the way out of the temptations came from Yashuah responding by quoting the Torah, namely Deuteronomy 6 and 8. His defense of the temptations was not some new thing.
Second: In Matthew 26:11, after the anointing of Yashuah, He chastised the disciples by saying, “The poor you will always have with you.” This is almost a direct quote from Deut. 15:11, “There will always be poor people in the land.”
Third: During the “cleansing of the temple” in Matthew 21, Yashuah was fulfilling a prophecy found in Zechariah 14:21, “On that day there will no longer be a merchant in the house of YHVH of Hosts.” (Note: Some translations have the word “Canaanite.” However, the word Canaanite is the word “merchant” in Hebrew.) He was cleansing the Temple of the “merchants.”
There are many other examples of this, but I would like to consider one that perhaps we have not examined before.
We are all familiar with the events surrounding the birth of the Messiah. The full account is found in Luke 2:1-40. After we read of the birth of the Messiah in verses 1 through 7, we are told of an angel of YHVH appearing to the shepherds. He brought “good news of great joy.” So the Gospel was first preached to the shepherds by the angel.
“Suddenly a great company of heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God . . .” (verse 13). The shepherds then went to see “this that had happened,” and they then spread the word concerning the child. The shepherds were the second to preach this “good news/gospel” and “all who heard it were amazed” (verses 15-18). We are told specifically that there were two people who received this good news: Simeon and Anna (see verses 25-38). I’m sure there were many more people who heard what the shepherds had to say and yet we are told the names of only two. Could these two individuals be significant? Well, I guess that’s the point of this article. What then is the significance?
“Now there was a man in Jerusalem called Simeon who was righteous and devout. He was waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit was upon him.” Wow! The Holy Spirit was upon this man. The Holy Spirit revealed to him that he would not die before he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. He no doubt heard the “rumor” spread by the shepherds, and so the Holy Spirit moved him to go into the temple courts in order to hold the baby and cause Joseph and Mary to “marvel at what was said about Him.” What was he waiting for? The consolation of Israel!! He knew that there was coming one who would be the comfort of his people.
“There was also a prophetess, Anna the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was very old; she had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then was a widow until she was eighty-four. She never left the temple but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying. Coming up to them at that very moment, she gave thanks to God and spoke about the child to all who were looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem” (verses 36-38).
We have two individuals, Simeon, who was looking for the consolation (i.e. comfort) of Israel and the other, Anna, who preached to those seeking the redemption of Jerusalem. Let us take a look at a prophecy that, in my estimation, is hidden in the 52 chapter of the book of Isaiah, starting in verse 7.
How beautiful on the mountains
Are the feet of those who bring good news,
Who proclaim peace,
Who bring good tidings,
Who proclaim salvation,
Who say to Zion,
“your God reigns!”
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices;
Together they shout for joy,
When YHVH returns to Zion,
They will see it with their own eyes.
Burst into songs of joy together,
You ruins of Jerusalem,
For YHVH has comforted His people,
He has redeemed Jerusalem.
It was the angel whose beautiful feet brought the “good news” and who proclaimed peace, who brought good tidings and proclaimed the Savior.
It was the shepherds who were the “watchmen” (watching the flocks) who lifted up their voices and shouted for joy.
It was the people of Jerusalem who heard the shepherds (the ruins of Jerusalem) who were amazed.
It was Simeon who received the revelation that YHVH would console (comfort) His people.
It was Anna who recognized the redemption of Jerusalem had come!
I like to say that the things we read in the Apostolic writings were not drawn out of thin air. They were told long ago in the Hebrew scriptures. And so the details surrounding Messiah’s birth were foretold long before by the prophet Isaiah. The same Isaiah foretold of Messiah’s virgin birth (see Is. 7:14). The same Isaiah told of a light dawning out of darkness in Galilee of the Gentiles (see Isaiah 9:1-2). The same Isaiah told of a child being born who would bear the government of God upon His shoulders (see Isaiah 9:6). The same Isaiah foretold that a shoot would come up from the stump of Jesse, a Branch who would bear fruit (see Isaiah 11:1).
I am amazed, sometimes, at the details given beforehand by the pen of the prophets!
May you, likewise, be continually edified by the intricacies of the word of God!
Change by Cynthia Saladin
None of us likes change, but it’s a reality of life in this mortal flesh. We are constantly changing, and everything around us is changing. As we head towards the end of August, the season is changing. We feel summer losing its grip; autumn is on the doorstep. The leaves will be changing. The garden will slow down. The grass doesn’t grow as fast. The dogs are more spry because the cooler temperatures invigorate them! And we keep hoping that Pepper will change - less rambunctious and willing to attack, more calm and pleasant to be around.
Some changes are good (Changing the oil in the car is a good thing.), and some are not so good (My labs have more and more white on their muzzles.). Perhaps the part of change which we like the least is that which leads to death. I don’t like thinking about the death of my dogs. I don’t like the declining health of family and friends. I don’t like the phone calls which tell me a good friend is gone, like Dad called this week. There is now a void. There’s something missing in my life, something that I had access to just a couple of weeks ago.
He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end (Ecclesiastes 3:11, NIV).
I am looking forward to the time when change is only beautiful. I am looking forward to the time when change doesn’t carry with it the overtone of coming death. I’m looking forward to the time when change doesn’t mean pain and loss. I’m looking forward to eternity and seeing again those who have already died in the Lord.
Parting Thought: Why is it called "after dark" when it really is "after light"?
November 2015
By Faith
. . . but the righteous shall live by his faith. Hab. 2:4
The boys and I had a very interesting two days this past week; we had the privilege of judging the National U-Fli Championship Competition at Purina Farms. It was amazing, and almost a little mind-blowing, that those dogs could fly down the track so quickly, pounce on that ball, and speed back to their handlers in less time than it takes me to describe it to you! Some of the races were decided in hundredths of a second. They were so close!
The dogs were various breeds, mixed and purebreds, tiny Italian greyhounds, muscular Dutch shepherds, wiry whippets, and noisy schnauzers. There were wild-eyed border collies, determined golden retrievers, obstinate Jack Russel terriers, and a dignified Westie. They all had one thing in common: they were going to get that ball and get back to their handler for a reward. I guess you could say they believed, every last one of them, that no matter whether they won or lost, their handler was going to be glad to see them and would reward them for their efforts.
In a very similar way, we who profess that Jesus is our Messiah live by faith. Our faith is just this: a belief that God exists and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). The first half of Hebrews 11:6 may seem like a given. Of course, God exists. If He didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here. But it encompasses more than that. We believe that because God exists, because He is the Creator of the universe and everything in it, He gets to make the rules. As the potter, we (as the clay) are to be molded however He sees fit. We don’t get to decide what the rules are and where we belong in His universe.
Furthermore, in Christian, Biblical terms, we have entered into a covenant with Him. We who have accepted the blood of Jesus Christ for our sins, have accepted Him as our Savior. We’ve accepted that He bought and paid for us, the price being His own sinless, perfect life. Because we now belong to Him, in covenant, and we have agreed to turn our lives over to Him, to submit to His will, we have the opportunity to grow closer in relationship to Him - to both Jesus Christ and God the Father. This is what it means to us, as Christians, to say that we believe God exists!
Secondly, we believe that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. That means that we trust God whatever comes our way. Whether we have plenty or are in want, whether the day is sunny or the storm clouds have rolled in, whether our health is good or we’re suffering, we believe that God knows what’s happening in our lives and our lives have purpose. The suffering and the blessings all have purpose. What happens to us, as we seek to be God’s servants with all of our hearts, is in God’s hands. So even if this life is not the stroll in the park we might have desired, we trust God that He knows what is best, it has a purpose for the future, and He will bless us beyond our imaginations in His kingdom.
With these two concepts as our foundation (the belief that God exists and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him), we can look at Habakuk 2:4 and assess how we are living as Christians.
. . . but the righteous shall live by his faith. Hab. 2:4
There was an interesting thing which happened with those dogs. They knew they were to only get the ball which was in the spring box. If there happened to be another ball on the floor, they acted as if it didn’t even exist. If another ball escaped from the line next to them, they completely ignored it. They knew what their job was and they didn’t allow something to distract them from their task.
I love that! Each dog knew what it’s task was and it set its mind on the goal. Wouldn’t you love to have life be so simple that you knew exactly how your race was to be run and which ball you were to grab that would most please your Master? I think that’s where the word “righteous” comes in. “Righteous” means “full of rightness” or “doing what is right.” That goes back to believing that God exists and that He gets to make the rules. We don’t have to come up with our own standards; we just have to learn how to live by the standards God has revealed in His word.
Occasionally, a dog would spit the ball out too soon, or the ball would pop out of the box in a weird direction and he’d lose the ball. The dog always went back to His master and started over.
We too make mistakes. We’re not perfect yet. But when we fall short of the goal and don’t keep our eyes on the ball (so to speak), we go back to our Master, repent, and start over again. As the trainer/handler keeps working with the dog, the Holy Spirit causes the new creature within to grow ever more like our God. (Obviously, unlike the dog, we depend upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ for our reward: salvation.)
In a interesting object lesson, I watched race after race for two days, with dogs performing as their handlers desired they would perform. Some of the dogs would pounce on the ball quickly and then lackadaisically lope back over the starting line. They had their reward already: the ball. That’s kind of like the Christian who thinks that God is going to bless them in this life and they are not too concerned about God’s kingdom and pleasing their Master.
There were some dogs who would pop the ball out of the box, and when it would bounce into the corner of the ring, they’d give up and head back over the finish line without having accomplished the goal. They knew they were supposed to hurry. They knew it was a race. They just knew that they couldn’t get the ball and hurry at the same time. They just gave up. I always felt sorry for them. The ball just took a weird bounce and they were completely discombobulated. This is kind of like the Christian to whom life throws a curve ball. They get flustered and forget what they’re supposed to do. They look at the people around them and forget what their purpose is in this life. We are here for God’s pleasure, not for our own pleasure or for the pleasure of others. Thankfully, God doesn’t give up on us when we bobble our responsibilities, anymore than the dog handlers rejected those dogs.
There were some dogs who would make A LOT of noise, but as soon as they began their run, they didn’t have time to bark. There were a few exceptions. One little terrier mix barked at every bound. In fact, when the dogs were in the ring, about ready to run their race, their intensity was palatable! I was so surprised to walk into the other side of the building, where the dogs were in their crates. It was quiet enough you could actually hear yourself think. Oh that we Christians would be so passionate about running our race for our Master!
In a very few cases, a dog would become so distracted by the other team racing against him that he’d leave his line, forgetting completely about the ball and the hurdles, and start chasing the other dog in the other line. It was immediately called as “interference” and the dog lost the race; the other team automatically won. I don’t want to become distracted by what someone else is doing in serving their master that I mess up my race and allow them to win by default. Seriously. Think about it! When I live by faith, I can’t allow myself to become distracted by anything or anyone else. My God is my primary focus. The task He has given me is my goal for completion. His standards are my guidelines to follow. I have no business looking at someone else’s race, at the ball they are carrying, and the pathway they are traversing. I have to keep my eyes on my God!
In the covenant terms, I can’t look at how someone else has decided God wants them to run the race. I know how God has told me to run. Those are the terms of the covenant that we agreed upon. I made a public confession that I had agreed upon those terms of the covenant when I was baptized. I can’t decide to change the terms of the covenant because the race isn’t easy, or because someone is doing it differently, or because I’m tired. God’s standards have not changed. The covenant we agreed upon has not been broken. God expects me to run the race that He’s set before me in the way He has told me to! In other words, or in Habakuk’s words, the righteous shall live by faith. I believe that God exists and has set the standard by which I live. That’s what I’m going to live by. That’s how I’m going to run my race. I’m going to keep my eyes on the goal that He has placed before me, believing that no matter what happens in my life, He’s in control. He will not leave me. He will never give me more than I can endure. He will guide me. He will encourage me. He will strengthen and teach me. He will reward me. But I have to do what He wants me to do. I have to run the race He has designed. I have to do it His way!
I love when God gives us object lessons to help us understand spiritual concepts. I love the image that played over and over before my eyes for 19 hours, of dogs running with all their heart just for the pleasure of their masters. Can I do any less? Can I just trudge through my days without the passion which comes from the awareness of how very much God has blessed me? Can I give less than my all in service for my King?
. . . but the righteous shall live by his faith. Hab. 2:4
I want to live by my faith in such a way that it’s obvious to all that I serve the Great God of the universe. I want my faith to be evident in my passion, in my joy, in my willingness to do what God has asked of me. I want to see the joy of my Master in a job well-done. I want to run my race to win!!
By Faith
. . . but the righteous shall live by his faith. Hab. 2:4
The boys and I had a very interesting two days this past week; we had the privilege of judging the National U-Fli Championship Competition at Purina Farms. It was amazing, and almost a little mind-blowing, that those dogs could fly down the track so quickly, pounce on that ball, and speed back to their handlers in less time than it takes me to describe it to you! Some of the races were decided in hundredths of a second. They were so close!
The dogs were various breeds, mixed and purebreds, tiny Italian greyhounds, muscular Dutch shepherds, wiry whippets, and noisy schnauzers. There were wild-eyed border collies, determined golden retrievers, obstinate Jack Russel terriers, and a dignified Westie. They all had one thing in common: they were going to get that ball and get back to their handler for a reward. I guess you could say they believed, every last one of them, that no matter whether they won or lost, their handler was going to be glad to see them and would reward them for their efforts.
In a very similar way, we who profess that Jesus is our Messiah live by faith. Our faith is just this: a belief that God exists and that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him (Hebrews 11:6). The first half of Hebrews 11:6 may seem like a given. Of course, God exists. If He didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be here. But it encompasses more than that. We believe that because God exists, because He is the Creator of the universe and everything in it, He gets to make the rules. As the potter, we (as the clay) are to be molded however He sees fit. We don’t get to decide what the rules are and where we belong in His universe.
Furthermore, in Christian, Biblical terms, we have entered into a covenant with Him. We who have accepted the blood of Jesus Christ for our sins, have accepted Him as our Savior. We’ve accepted that He bought and paid for us, the price being His own sinless, perfect life. Because we now belong to Him, in covenant, and we have agreed to turn our lives over to Him, to submit to His will, we have the opportunity to grow closer in relationship to Him - to both Jesus Christ and God the Father. This is what it means to us, as Christians, to say that we believe God exists!
Secondly, we believe that He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. That means that we trust God whatever comes our way. Whether we have plenty or are in want, whether the day is sunny or the storm clouds have rolled in, whether our health is good or we’re suffering, we believe that God knows what’s happening in our lives and our lives have purpose. The suffering and the blessings all have purpose. What happens to us, as we seek to be God’s servants with all of our hearts, is in God’s hands. So even if this life is not the stroll in the park we might have desired, we trust God that He knows what is best, it has a purpose for the future, and He will bless us beyond our imaginations in His kingdom.
With these two concepts as our foundation (the belief that God exists and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him), we can look at Habakuk 2:4 and assess how we are living as Christians.
. . . but the righteous shall live by his faith. Hab. 2:4
There was an interesting thing which happened with those dogs. They knew they were to only get the ball which was in the spring box. If there happened to be another ball on the floor, they acted as if it didn’t even exist. If another ball escaped from the line next to them, they completely ignored it. They knew what their job was and they didn’t allow something to distract them from their task.
I love that! Each dog knew what it’s task was and it set its mind on the goal. Wouldn’t you love to have life be so simple that you knew exactly how your race was to be run and which ball you were to grab that would most please your Master? I think that’s where the word “righteous” comes in. “Righteous” means “full of rightness” or “doing what is right.” That goes back to believing that God exists and that He gets to make the rules. We don’t have to come up with our own standards; we just have to learn how to live by the standards God has revealed in His word.
Occasionally, a dog would spit the ball out too soon, or the ball would pop out of the box in a weird direction and he’d lose the ball. The dog always went back to His master and started over.
We too make mistakes. We’re not perfect yet. But when we fall short of the goal and don’t keep our eyes on the ball (so to speak), we go back to our Master, repent, and start over again. As the trainer/handler keeps working with the dog, the Holy Spirit causes the new creature within to grow ever more like our God. (Obviously, unlike the dog, we depend upon the righteousness of Jesus Christ for our reward: salvation.)
In a interesting object lesson, I watched race after race for two days, with dogs performing as their handlers desired they would perform. Some of the dogs would pounce on the ball quickly and then lackadaisically lope back over the starting line. They had their reward already: the ball. That’s kind of like the Christian who thinks that God is going to bless them in this life and they are not too concerned about God’s kingdom and pleasing their Master.
There were some dogs who would pop the ball out of the box, and when it would bounce into the corner of the ring, they’d give up and head back over the finish line without having accomplished the goal. They knew they were supposed to hurry. They knew it was a race. They just knew that they couldn’t get the ball and hurry at the same time. They just gave up. I always felt sorry for them. The ball just took a weird bounce and they were completely discombobulated. This is kind of like the Christian to whom life throws a curve ball. They get flustered and forget what they’re supposed to do. They look at the people around them and forget what their purpose is in this life. We are here for God’s pleasure, not for our own pleasure or for the pleasure of others. Thankfully, God doesn’t give up on us when we bobble our responsibilities, anymore than the dog handlers rejected those dogs.
There were some dogs who would make A LOT of noise, but as soon as they began their run, they didn’t have time to bark. There were a few exceptions. One little terrier mix barked at every bound. In fact, when the dogs were in the ring, about ready to run their race, their intensity was palatable! I was so surprised to walk into the other side of the building, where the dogs were in their crates. It was quiet enough you could actually hear yourself think. Oh that we Christians would be so passionate about running our race for our Master!
In a very few cases, a dog would become so distracted by the other team racing against him that he’d leave his line, forgetting completely about the ball and the hurdles, and start chasing the other dog in the other line. It was immediately called as “interference” and the dog lost the race; the other team automatically won. I don’t want to become distracted by what someone else is doing in serving their master that I mess up my race and allow them to win by default. Seriously. Think about it! When I live by faith, I can’t allow myself to become distracted by anything or anyone else. My God is my primary focus. The task He has given me is my goal for completion. His standards are my guidelines to follow. I have no business looking at someone else’s race, at the ball they are carrying, and the pathway they are traversing. I have to keep my eyes on my God!
In the covenant terms, I can’t look at how someone else has decided God wants them to run the race. I know how God has told me to run. Those are the terms of the covenant that we agreed upon. I made a public confession that I had agreed upon those terms of the covenant when I was baptized. I can’t decide to change the terms of the covenant because the race isn’t easy, or because someone is doing it differently, or because I’m tired. God’s standards have not changed. The covenant we agreed upon has not been broken. God expects me to run the race that He’s set before me in the way He has told me to! In other words, or in Habakuk’s words, the righteous shall live by faith. I believe that God exists and has set the standard by which I live. That’s what I’m going to live by. That’s how I’m going to run my race. I’m going to keep my eyes on the goal that He has placed before me, believing that no matter what happens in my life, He’s in control. He will not leave me. He will never give me more than I can endure. He will guide me. He will encourage me. He will strengthen and teach me. He will reward me. But I have to do what He wants me to do. I have to run the race He has designed. I have to do it His way!
I love when God gives us object lessons to help us understand spiritual concepts. I love the image that played over and over before my eyes for 19 hours, of dogs running with all their heart just for the pleasure of their masters. Can I do any less? Can I just trudge through my days without the passion which comes from the awareness of how very much God has blessed me? Can I give less than my all in service for my King?
. . . but the righteous shall live by his faith. Hab. 2:4
I want to live by my faith in such a way that it’s obvious to all that I serve the Great God of the universe. I want my faith to be evident in my passion, in my joy, in my willingness to do what God has asked of me. I want to see the joy of my Master in a job well-done. I want to run my race to win!!
December 2015
Fear or Faith in God
by Cynthia Saladin
One day last week I was walking the dogs in the early morning. It was one of those beautiful fall mornings, crisp, but not cold, and the dogs were having a delightful time. Velvet was on the leash, but that only diminished her enjoyment when Pepper flushed a deer out of the woods right in front of her and Velvet couldn’t give chase. What a thrill it was to see the white flag as the deer quickly vanished from sight! Farther up the path, Ebony spied a squirrel, which she and Pepper rapidly chased up a tree. It was a big tree; I wouldn’t have been able to put my arms all the way around it and touch my fingers on the other side. It was a safe place for a plump squirrel. But as I watched, the squirrel made its way down the trunk on the opposite side of the tree from where Ebony was barking. I thought, “Surely that squirrel isn’t stupid enough to leave the safety of the tree!” As the thought was being formulated in my mind, my eyes saw the reality: yes, the squirrel was indeed stupid enough to leave the safety of the tree. It won’t make that mistake, or any other mistake, again.
I thought about the unnecessary death of the squirrel - all due to its fear that the tree wouldn’t be able to protect it from Ebony. It didn’t trust in the safety of the tree in the face of Ebony’s barking. And I wondered about us, about what we fear that causes us to leave the safety of our Heavenly Father to take our chances away from His security.
With the image of the squirrel scene fresh in your mind, you think, “There’s no way we’d be so stupid. We wouldn’t leave the tree.” Oh yes, we do! Seriously!
Consider two scriptures:
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25).
“And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him - a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12).
When we decide not to fellowship on a weekly basis with our church family, we cut ourselves off from our support system. We make ourselves much more vulnerable to attacks from Satan. Think about it. When wolves want to pull down their prey, they isolate it. When a lion gets ready to make a kill, it will separate the victim from the herd. Is it any wonder that Peter tells us that “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). It’s a familiar axiom: divide and conquer.
So, resist the schemes of Satan to separate you and make you vulnerable. Make every effort to attend church every Sabbath! You need the encouragement and the rest of the body needs the encouragement that you bring.
There’s another way that we are like the squirrel who leaves the security of the tree. It is obedience to God. Think about what Moses said to the people before they entered the Promised Land:
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, being his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days . . .” (Deut. 30:19-20).
Keeping God’s laws, following His ways, obeying Him with all of your heart, seeking Him in everything you do, putting Him first - these are all synonymous statements for choosing life. God is life. Obeying Him brings life because it is an indication of your relationship with God, of how important the Source of Life is, to you, in everything you do.
But we like to do what we want to do. We find excuses for tweaking God’s law - as if we could do anything to improve upon what God has designed. If you accuse someone of doing that, they’ll tell you you’re insane. But think about it: if you worship God on Sunday instead of the Sabbath, then you’re, in effect, saying that what God designed and put in place from Creation, isn’t good enough. It needs to be improved! Or if you decide that two hours a week is enough Sabbath, and you’re going to work the rest of the day, you’re really saying that everyone else may need a full 24 hours, but you don’t. You’re good just the way you are, as if the Sabbath is all about you, instead of all about God as your Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
God’s law is like that tree. It meant life to that squirrel, but the squirrel decided it had a better way. Leaving that tree sealed its death warrant!
Sometimes we leave God’s way because we’re scared. Have you ever done anything because you second guessed yourself and jumped before the time? I was driving to Brainerd, MN for a teaching interview in April 1989. I got into the heavy Minneapolis traffic and got a little nervous. I knew what highway connection I needed; I just panicked and veered right when I should’ve veered to the left. As soon as I did, I knew I’d gone the wrong way. It was a hassle to try to figure out how to exit the highway, turn around and go the way I really needed to go. It was an unnecessary inconvenience because I’d gotten scared and jumped to an action that I knew wasn’t right.
Similarly, sometimes I think we see life approaching us, like rush hour traffic, and we panic. We know what God’s word says, but we get scared and we jump to an action that we know, deep down, isn’t right. Many of those life decisions aren’t as easy to fix as my wrong turn in downtown Minneapolis. Many of our actions have ripple effects, affecting more than we can ever imagine, kind of like that squirrel’s decision to jump off that tree. His choice couldn’t be remedied by a quick u-turn. His choice ended in death.
It hurts - thinking about that cute, furry little animal’s untimely death. It was so unnecessary. It could have so easily been prevented. He could’ve stayed safely in the tree and scolded us all day long. Ebony couldn’t have touched him. In a similar way, it hurts to watch the people around us choose to walk contrary to God’s laws, His life-giving ways. There’s a popular acronym for Bible: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. We grin and then promptly dismiss the incredible impact the Bible should have on our daily lives. It’s the owner’s manual that teaches us how to live. It shows us how life works. It contains all the basic instructions we need in order to live God-fearing, God-honoring lives. It points us to God, reminds us to seek Him daily, to pray without ceasing, to humble ourselves and fast, and to set our minds on Him. The Bible shows us what a relationship with God looks like - in terms we can understand, like a good marriage. It provides encouragement to trust God because He is good all the time. It provides correction because the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and we can’t rely on ourselves to straighten ourselves out. It provides exhortation to run to God for our needs, our protection, our desires, our very life.
Sometimes God gives us a vivid object lesson to remind us our spiritual truths - like the death of a squirrel who left the security of a tree. Sometimes we have eyes to see, and the lesson reverberates in our mind’s eye for some time to come. Other times, we’re so busy with our daily tasks that we miss the object lesson. We may even trip over it because God planted it so firmly in our path. But we pick ourselves up and blithely continue our own way, to our own hurt, completely missing the lesson, the blessing from God. I wonder how many times I’ve done that this week. I wonder how many other lessons God designed for my benefit that I completely missed! Oh, that I may I keep my eyes fixed on my Master and open to His teaching all the time!! Then, perhaps, I won’t fall prey to fear and leave the safety of the tree!
Gratefulness!
by Cynthia Saladin
I suspect that when I turn my computer off at night, the email messages take the opportunity to multiply - kind of like rabbits. Seriously though, I’m amazed at how many emails flow into my inbox every day. Unfortunately too many of them are just junk mail, but there are way too many good ones to even keep up with. So I skim and glean bits and pieces here and there. So I don’t really know where it was that I read it last week, but I saw this quote: What if we woke up this morning with only the things for which we had given God thanks yesterday. Think about it. What if, in your prayers yesterday, you only presented a laundry list of what you wanted God to do, and then said a quick “amen”? What if you didn’t thank God for anything? What if you awoke only to the things for which you had given thanks?
The thought hit me . . . hard. It’s a curse of human nature, or maybe it’s just me, but I have a tendency to dwell on the things that are not going well, the things that need my attention, the events which are coming up. I spend relatively little time thinking about the things that are done, the events which are past, the things that are going well. In a word, I am guilty of taking things for granted.
I remember seeing a billboard once: Ignore your teeth and they’ll go away.
What if our blessings are like that? What if we ignore the incredible things that God has given us, has done for us, and we neglect to recognize them? Will they also go away?
It’s a truth of nature that things do not remain static. Things either get better or they get worse. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that, left alone, all things will tend towards chaos and decay. Think about your silverware drawer, your tool shed, the shoes in your closet, or your underwear drawer. If you do not make a concerted effort to keep things neat and orderly, they will soon be a mess!
So if you don’t pay attention, if you don’t recognize the blessings that you have, you could lose them?
If you have a great marriage, but you put no time and effort into it, you will start the lose the closeness you have with your mate. If you have good teeth, but you don’t brush them, you will start to have decay. If you have a nice car, but you don’t wax it and keep it out of the sun, the paint will start to fade, the decaying process will progress faster than if you take steps to prevent it. If you don’t read your Bible daily, you will start to make choices based on your carnal nature and your desires, rather than Godly choices. If you never wash your kitchen floor, it will not take long for dirt and grime to coat the whole thing!! Deterioration is part of our world (Romans 8:20), so why wouldn’t it also apply to the blessings we don’t value enough to be grateful for?
The children and I picked 50 gallons of strawberries this past June, but I was so busy this summer that I didn’t spend the time I needed to spend in the strawberry patch. The weeds moved in dramatically. Late this fall, I cleaned them out, but many of the strawberry plants had already been choked out. I don’t think we’re going to have the crop this next June that we have had the past few years. I didn’t nurture the blessing I had. If I hadn’t cleaned out the weeds or if I never clean out the weeds again, the strawberry patch will eventually disappear. The blessing will be gone.
It gives an entirely different slant on the verse “ . . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling . . .” (Phil 2:12). Our salvation is a free gift from God, but if we don’t thank God for that gift, if we don't live our lives appreciating that gift, if we don’t show the change in our lives because of that gift, if we aren’t becoming more and more like God, bringing every thought into submission to Him, then maybe, just maybe we weren’t really saved to start with. Or maybe we’ll be saved, but our position in God’s kingdom will be so very much less than it could have been.
Is your heart filled with gratefulness to God for what He has done for you, for how far He has brought you? How often do you consider these things and thank Him for them? Do you think about Deut. 28:47: “Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies . . .”? And what if tomorrow, you only had those things you were thankful for today?
Fear or Faith in God
by Cynthia Saladin
One day last week I was walking the dogs in the early morning. It was one of those beautiful fall mornings, crisp, but not cold, and the dogs were having a delightful time. Velvet was on the leash, but that only diminished her enjoyment when Pepper flushed a deer out of the woods right in front of her and Velvet couldn’t give chase. What a thrill it was to see the white flag as the deer quickly vanished from sight! Farther up the path, Ebony spied a squirrel, which she and Pepper rapidly chased up a tree. It was a big tree; I wouldn’t have been able to put my arms all the way around it and touch my fingers on the other side. It was a safe place for a plump squirrel. But as I watched, the squirrel made its way down the trunk on the opposite side of the tree from where Ebony was barking. I thought, “Surely that squirrel isn’t stupid enough to leave the safety of the tree!” As the thought was being formulated in my mind, my eyes saw the reality: yes, the squirrel was indeed stupid enough to leave the safety of the tree. It won’t make that mistake, or any other mistake, again.
I thought about the unnecessary death of the squirrel - all due to its fear that the tree wouldn’t be able to protect it from Ebony. It didn’t trust in the safety of the tree in the face of Ebony’s barking. And I wondered about us, about what we fear that causes us to leave the safety of our Heavenly Father to take our chances away from His security.
With the image of the squirrel scene fresh in your mind, you think, “There’s no way we’d be so stupid. We wouldn’t leave the tree.” Oh yes, we do! Seriously!
Consider two scriptures:
“And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near” (Hebrews 10:24-25).
“And though a man might prevail against one who is alone, two will withstand him - a threefold cord is not quickly broken” (Ecclesiastes 4:12).
When we decide not to fellowship on a weekly basis with our church family, we cut ourselves off from our support system. We make ourselves much more vulnerable to attacks from Satan. Think about it. When wolves want to pull down their prey, they isolate it. When a lion gets ready to make a kill, it will separate the victim from the herd. Is it any wonder that Peter tells us that “your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8). It’s a familiar axiom: divide and conquer.
So, resist the schemes of Satan to separate you and make you vulnerable. Make every effort to attend church every Sabbath! You need the encouragement and the rest of the body needs the encouragement that you bring.
There’s another way that we are like the squirrel who leaves the security of the tree. It is obedience to God. Think about what Moses said to the people before they entered the Promised Land:
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live, loving the LORD your God, being his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life and length of days . . .” (Deut. 30:19-20).
Keeping God’s laws, following His ways, obeying Him with all of your heart, seeking Him in everything you do, putting Him first - these are all synonymous statements for choosing life. God is life. Obeying Him brings life because it is an indication of your relationship with God, of how important the Source of Life is, to you, in everything you do.
But we like to do what we want to do. We find excuses for tweaking God’s law - as if we could do anything to improve upon what God has designed. If you accuse someone of doing that, they’ll tell you you’re insane. But think about it: if you worship God on Sunday instead of the Sabbath, then you’re, in effect, saying that what God designed and put in place from Creation, isn’t good enough. It needs to be improved! Or if you decide that two hours a week is enough Sabbath, and you’re going to work the rest of the day, you’re really saying that everyone else may need a full 24 hours, but you don’t. You’re good just the way you are, as if the Sabbath is all about you, instead of all about God as your Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer.
God’s law is like that tree. It meant life to that squirrel, but the squirrel decided it had a better way. Leaving that tree sealed its death warrant!
Sometimes we leave God’s way because we’re scared. Have you ever done anything because you second guessed yourself and jumped before the time? I was driving to Brainerd, MN for a teaching interview in April 1989. I got into the heavy Minneapolis traffic and got a little nervous. I knew what highway connection I needed; I just panicked and veered right when I should’ve veered to the left. As soon as I did, I knew I’d gone the wrong way. It was a hassle to try to figure out how to exit the highway, turn around and go the way I really needed to go. It was an unnecessary inconvenience because I’d gotten scared and jumped to an action that I knew wasn’t right.
Similarly, sometimes I think we see life approaching us, like rush hour traffic, and we panic. We know what God’s word says, but we get scared and we jump to an action that we know, deep down, isn’t right. Many of those life decisions aren’t as easy to fix as my wrong turn in downtown Minneapolis. Many of our actions have ripple effects, affecting more than we can ever imagine, kind of like that squirrel’s decision to jump off that tree. His choice couldn’t be remedied by a quick u-turn. His choice ended in death.
It hurts - thinking about that cute, furry little animal’s untimely death. It was so unnecessary. It could have so easily been prevented. He could’ve stayed safely in the tree and scolded us all day long. Ebony couldn’t have touched him. In a similar way, it hurts to watch the people around us choose to walk contrary to God’s laws, His life-giving ways. There’s a popular acronym for Bible: Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth. We grin and then promptly dismiss the incredible impact the Bible should have on our daily lives. It’s the owner’s manual that teaches us how to live. It shows us how life works. It contains all the basic instructions we need in order to live God-fearing, God-honoring lives. It points us to God, reminds us to seek Him daily, to pray without ceasing, to humble ourselves and fast, and to set our minds on Him. The Bible shows us what a relationship with God looks like - in terms we can understand, like a good marriage. It provides encouragement to trust God because He is good all the time. It provides correction because the heart is deceitful and desperately wicked, and we can’t rely on ourselves to straighten ourselves out. It provides exhortation to run to God for our needs, our protection, our desires, our very life.
Sometimes God gives us a vivid object lesson to remind us our spiritual truths - like the death of a squirrel who left the security of a tree. Sometimes we have eyes to see, and the lesson reverberates in our mind’s eye for some time to come. Other times, we’re so busy with our daily tasks that we miss the object lesson. We may even trip over it because God planted it so firmly in our path. But we pick ourselves up and blithely continue our own way, to our own hurt, completely missing the lesson, the blessing from God. I wonder how many times I’ve done that this week. I wonder how many other lessons God designed for my benefit that I completely missed! Oh, that I may I keep my eyes fixed on my Master and open to His teaching all the time!! Then, perhaps, I won’t fall prey to fear and leave the safety of the tree!
Gratefulness!
by Cynthia Saladin
I suspect that when I turn my computer off at night, the email messages take the opportunity to multiply - kind of like rabbits. Seriously though, I’m amazed at how many emails flow into my inbox every day. Unfortunately too many of them are just junk mail, but there are way too many good ones to even keep up with. So I skim and glean bits and pieces here and there. So I don’t really know where it was that I read it last week, but I saw this quote: What if we woke up this morning with only the things for which we had given God thanks yesterday. Think about it. What if, in your prayers yesterday, you only presented a laundry list of what you wanted God to do, and then said a quick “amen”? What if you didn’t thank God for anything? What if you awoke only to the things for which you had given thanks?
The thought hit me . . . hard. It’s a curse of human nature, or maybe it’s just me, but I have a tendency to dwell on the things that are not going well, the things that need my attention, the events which are coming up. I spend relatively little time thinking about the things that are done, the events which are past, the things that are going well. In a word, I am guilty of taking things for granted.
I remember seeing a billboard once: Ignore your teeth and they’ll go away.
What if our blessings are like that? What if we ignore the incredible things that God has given us, has done for us, and we neglect to recognize them? Will they also go away?
It’s a truth of nature that things do not remain static. Things either get better or they get worse. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that, left alone, all things will tend towards chaos and decay. Think about your silverware drawer, your tool shed, the shoes in your closet, or your underwear drawer. If you do not make a concerted effort to keep things neat and orderly, they will soon be a mess!
So if you don’t pay attention, if you don’t recognize the blessings that you have, you could lose them?
If you have a great marriage, but you put no time and effort into it, you will start the lose the closeness you have with your mate. If you have good teeth, but you don’t brush them, you will start to have decay. If you have a nice car, but you don’t wax it and keep it out of the sun, the paint will start to fade, the decaying process will progress faster than if you take steps to prevent it. If you don’t read your Bible daily, you will start to make choices based on your carnal nature and your desires, rather than Godly choices. If you never wash your kitchen floor, it will not take long for dirt and grime to coat the whole thing!! Deterioration is part of our world (Romans 8:20), so why wouldn’t it also apply to the blessings we don’t value enough to be grateful for?
The children and I picked 50 gallons of strawberries this past June, but I was so busy this summer that I didn’t spend the time I needed to spend in the strawberry patch. The weeds moved in dramatically. Late this fall, I cleaned them out, but many of the strawberry plants had already been choked out. I don’t think we’re going to have the crop this next June that we have had the past few years. I didn’t nurture the blessing I had. If I hadn’t cleaned out the weeds or if I never clean out the weeds again, the strawberry patch will eventually disappear. The blessing will be gone.
It gives an entirely different slant on the verse “ . . . work out your own salvation with fear and trembling . . .” (Phil 2:12). Our salvation is a free gift from God, but if we don’t thank God for that gift, if we don't live our lives appreciating that gift, if we don’t show the change in our lives because of that gift, if we aren’t becoming more and more like God, bringing every thought into submission to Him, then maybe, just maybe we weren’t really saved to start with. Or maybe we’ll be saved, but our position in God’s kingdom will be so very much less than it could have been.
Is your heart filled with gratefulness to God for what He has done for you, for how far He has brought you? How often do you consider these things and thank Him for them? Do you think about Deut. 28:47: “Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies . . .”? And what if tomorrow, you only had those things you were thankful for today?