God's Little Lessons on Life for Dad

Greetings All,

     This weeks "thought" comes to you from a book I picked up at a yard sale a few weeks back. It's called, "God's Little Lessons on Life for Dad."  No author is mentioned, just the publisher - Honor Books, Tulsa Oklahoma.
     It is filled with encouraging thoughts for dads. This one has to do with restoration. It has to do with learning lessons the hard way, needing to be brought low to be lifted up, and realizing its never too late to change.  "As long as there's breath," as the old saying goes, "there's hope."  Enjoy.

"Turn us back to You, O Lord, and we will be restored;

renew our days as of old." Lamentations 5:21

     "J. C. Penny (James Cash Penny, son of a Baptist minister and founder of the chain of stores that bear his name) worked many years to become a financial success before a crisis changed his life. "When I worked for six dollars a week at Joslin's Dry Goods Store back in Denver," he recalled, "it was my ambition to be worth one hundred thousand dollars. When I reached that goal (by 1913) I felt a certain temporary satisfaction, but it soon wore off and my sights were set on becoming worth a million dollars (a goal he achieved in 1924)."

     Penny and his wife worked hard to expand the business -- so hard that one day Mrs. Penny became ill and developed pneumonia, which claimed her life. "When she died," he said, "my world crashed about me. What had money meant to my wife? I felt mocked by life, even by God Himself."

     Several more fiery trials ensued (including the Great Depression), and soon J. C. Penny was financially ruined and in deep emotional distress. At this point, he began to acknowledge his self-centered nature and his idolatry of money, and he experienced a spiritual conversion.

     "When I was brought to humility and the knowledge of dependence on God, it was forthcoming and a light illumined my being."

     $100,000.  $1,000,000.  The death of a loved one.  Sometimes it takes tragedy, not success, to restore us to the divine image in which we were created."

     Penny's conversion surrounded the loss of all his personal wealth due to the stock market crash of 1929. When the financial setbacks took a toll on his health, he checked himself into the Battle Creek Sanitarium for treatment.

     There in the hospital's chapel he heard someone sing the hymn, "God Will Take Care of You."  He repented, turned in faith to Christ, and became a professedly "born-again" Christian.

     He lived to be 95 years old, dying in February of 1971. He was involved with the founding of the University of Miami (being on its board from 1926-1930), started a group called 40Plus which helped unemployed managers and executives, and in 1954 started the James C. Penny Foundation for charitable giving.

     It was crisis, struggle, emotional pain, and the loss of nearly everything which God used to turn his life around. As many can testify, the Lord's gifts often come in the most unusual and unexpected of packages.

Blessings on your day, Pastor Jeff

God's in Control

Greetings All,

It's been a somewhat turbulent week, at least for the one who listens to the news, hears about the economic crisis, foreclosures, the worst housing slump in nearly 20 years, the financial bailout deal and then considers the corruption that goes on at the highest echelons of the financial world we so trust in. Add that to the usual news of terrorist activities, hostilities between nations, and the sense we all feel that we lack the ability to stop the downward spirial and it can be somewhat frightening. I've even noticed it in the general mood of people, and the looming sense of quiet nervousness I see when I look around. People just want it to get better and all go away.

A friend wrote this to me today:

"I was reading Haggai 2 this morning. Verse 6-7 says, For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land; And I will shake all nations, and the desire of all nations shall come: and I will fill this house with glory, saith the LORD of hosts."

The current financial crisis is just one part of what seems to be another shaking of the nations. It encourages me that through the shaking, the Desire of all nations comes into view (Jesus) and this house (our lives as temples of the Holy Spirit) are filled with His glory. The hard times are indeed often the times through which God is most glorified in His church."

He's right. At times like these the church has its greatest opportunity to stand out from among the masses and be different. Knowing we serve a Sovereign King who rules over all helps keep fears at bay by assuring us God is on His throne. It also helps us know there must be a purpose in it all. Jerry Bridges is right: "Nothing comes our way that does not first pass through the filter of God's love for us." Whatever we are experiencing there is something to be learned -- some impetus of growth for us in it -- or it would never pass through the filter of His love and land at our doorstep. (Can you tell I just ended a two year study of Job not long ago?!)

For too long we have gotten our sense of peace, contentment, freedom from anxiety or stress and a calm faith-filled outlook toward the future from the wrong source (whether we were conscious of it or not). And since God "will not share His glory with another, or His praise with idols," He must, at some point, shake things up and draw our attention to idolatries that we may have been unaware of, or in denial about.

One of the ways God shows us the "idols" who have been sharing His glory in our hearts is to shake them and let us watch them teeter back and forth, and with it our confidence in them, and then let us see and feel our response to their downfall or demise. With our mouths we say the economy is not an idol, but the nervousness we sometimes feel inside at its potential collapse should tell us otherwise.

Yet why are we nervous when God remains in control. Why the anxiety when the object of our trust and confidence never changes. The world is shaken, and things seem to be falling apart at the seams, but He remains forever strong and wise and trustworthy (His robe is seemless)! The circumstances that assault us do not change His immmutable nature or the immutable nature of His promises to care for and provide the needs of His people -- promises that are not conditioned on the state of the U.S. or world economy.

By shaking those idols He is simply calling us back to Himself as the source of our confidence -- the God in whom it should have been resting wholly and entirely all along. Not Him plus Wall Street, or Him plus anything else. In fact, if the trust or faith of His people for peace, rest of soul, freedom from worry and anxiety, joy, happiness and an unbroken confidence that our needs will be supplied, comes more from the strength of the U.S. economy than Him, He must strike it down, for in that case it has indeed become an idol, and thus has come to share His glory, and praise. It has become a "replacement savior," or to use another term, it has become "co-redemptrix" (to us) with Jesus.

My friend is right: "The hard times are indeed often the times through which God is most glorified in His church." Let people see your trust in Him and not your fears about the economy. It's a time to be confident in God and not anxious about the potential loss of things. We may indeed have to settle for less, but maybe we've had so much for so long we've "forgotten our God." (Proverbs 30:7-9)

God is in control, my friends. There was never a time when He was not or will not be. Let its truth temper your fears and guide your heart even through turbulent times.

Trusting In Him, Pastor Jeff

Dr. Jeffrey F. Evans

Christ Community Bible Church