"The Source of All Power" and "The Love of Money."

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes to you from Aaron Tabor's book, the Jesus Daily devotional. I picked up a copy on sale a few months back and have been using it in the mornings with my girls. The entries are short, well written, and with true to Scripture.  He makes the daily verses from the Bible understandable and uses good visual contemporary illustrations.
     Tabor is founder of the Jesus Daily Facepage which has over 27,000,000 followers from 20+ countries. He is also a medical doctor, having graduated from John Hopkins School of Medicine, and president of Gene Facelift, a gene therapy biotechnology company.
      I have selected two sample entries "The Source of All Power" and "The Love of Money."  Enjoy.

The Source of All Power

"The God of Israel gives power and strength to his people." Psalm 68:35

     "In many parts of the world, electricity provides a standard of living that's easily taken for granted. Lamps, heaters, air conditioners and other conveniences rely on electric power to generate illumination, warm and cool air, and time-saving, effort-reducing assistance for our homes, businesses, schools and churches.

     When a power outage occurs for any length of time, we're forced to return to the basics of surviving. Suddenly, how we remain at a comfortable temperature is not so easy.  Ways to preserve our fresh food become a priority. Tasks that take seconds or minutes seem to require minutes and hours.

     When things are going smoothly in our lives, we might be tempted to take God's strength and power for granted. However, when our own abilities fail us, we once again get back to basics. We realize that the Lord is the source of all our power. Anything we accomplish is only because of him.

     Unplug [from the internet] for at least an hour today, using the time offline to pray, meditate, or rest in the strength of the Lord."

The Love of Money

"For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.  Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."  I Timothy 6:10

     "When a weed takes root in your garden, it drains nutrients in the soil away from other plants, such as flowers or vegetables. Many weeds often bind themselves around the roots of other plants to anchor themselves into the soil deeper. They not only choke off the other plants, but they also secure themselves into the ground. Eventually, they replace the flower and its natural systems of survival with their own roots, shoots, and tendrils.

     The love and pursuit of money can be an enormous weed in our spiritual garden. With thorns that entrap you and greed that grows like dandelions, desire for wealth can block your vision, disrupt your path, and kill your heart [for God]. There's nothing you can save, buy or spend that you can take with you for eternity. Only the fruit of the Spirit that you cultivate now will last.

     Spend time today tending your spiritual garden and eliminate the weed of greed.  Make a donation to your church, a charity, or a ministry today -- something more than just your usual tithe."

     The older one gets, the more obvious these truth become.  God, as Paul says, is the One who "gives us life, and breath, and everything else."  (Acts 17:25)  I derive from Him the gracious gift of life, and strength, and all I need for everything I do -- even if I am not conscious of my dependence of Him for all of it.  Every breath I take to fill my lungs and feed oxygen to my blood, and every beat of my heart that pumps that blood throughout my body, is empowered by Him. Were He to speak the word it would all stop.  Apart from Him I really could do nothing. He sustains my life -- and yours as well -- from the simplest functions to the most complex.

     Likewise, the older one gets, the more they realize that things are merely things, and they must leave every last one behind. In fact, in youth we seem driven to accumulate, but as we grow older we seem more driven to clean out, unload, give away and pare down to the essentials. Things that seemed so important and necessary to our happiness before, now seem so trivial and unnecessary -- as they sit stored in the attic, closet, cellar, garage or storage unit, untouched and sometimes unseen for years.

     If only we had the perspective of time and the wisdom of age when we were young.  It would cause us to travel through life with a much different focus.  As the apostle Peter could write to all in the church when in his old age: "Dear friends, I urge you, as strangers and aliens in this world, to abstain from its sinful desires, which war against the soul."  Strangers and aliens (foreigners) don't seek to accumulate.  They travel light, because they realize their true and permanent home is elsewhere. Precisely.

     I pray you might do as Aaron suggests and "unplug from the internet" -- for at least an hour or maybe an entire day or week(!) -- and use the time to pray, to meditate on Scripture (or the many things you are dependent upon God for), and not only rest in His strength, but thank Him for the gracious and continual supply of it.

In His Service, Pastor Jeff

Speed Limit Ahead

Greetings All,
This weeks 'thought'' comes from Michael Yaconelli's book "Messy Spirituality." It's a book for people tired of the relentless parade of success stories. It's for people who know their imperfections all too well and wrestle with sins they never quite conquer. It's for people who know their desperate need for God's grace in Jesus and cling to it with all tenacity.

The premise of the book (in my opinion) is found on page 13 where he states: "Accepting the reality of our broken, flawed lives is the beginning of spirituality not because the spiritual life will remove our flaws but because we let go of seeking perfection and, instead, seek God, the one who is present in the tangledness of our lives. Spirituality is not about being fixed; it is about God's being present in the mess of our unfixedness."

Michael passed away a few years back after spending 42 years in ministry. This thought is in memory of him. For his willingness to be transparent and for his many helpful insights.

The Sin of Speed and the Need for Increasing Slowness

"When my children were young, track meets filled part of each week during the spring. One particularly hot spring day, I attended a junior high track meet, arriving in the middle of the boys' 1500 meter race. During the last lap of the race, the audience stood, cheering two boys running side by side for the final 50 meters. A short distance behind them ran a pack of about four or five boys jockeying for third place... As I looked down the track, I saw one boy lagging far behind. Poor kid. The portly seventh grader struggled for each breath, his face red and sweaty, the main artery in his neck bulging and throbbing to supply oxygen to his deprived muscles. Suddenly the woman to my left stepped over me and rushed down to the railing overlooking the track -- obviously the boy's mother. She screamed, 'Johnny, run faster!' I wish you could have seen the incredulous look on the boy's face. He had to be thinking, 'Mom! I'm running as fast as I can!'

Spiritual growth does not happen by running faster. What keeps many of us from growing is not sin but speed. Most of us are like Johnny. We are going as fast as we can, living life at a dizzying speed, and God is nowhere to be found. We're not rejecting God; we just don't have time for him. We've lost him in the blurred landscape as we rush to church. We don't struggle with the Bible, but with the clock. It's not that we're too decadent; we're too busy. We don't feel guilty because of sin, but because we have no time for our spouses, our children, or our God. It's not sinning too much that's killing our souls, it's our schedule that's annihilating us. Most of us don't come home at night staggering drunk. Instead, we come home staggering tired, worn out, exhausted, and drained because we live too fast.

Speed is not neutral. Fast living used to mean a life of debauchery; now it just means fast, but the consequences are even more serious. Speeding through life endangers our relationships and our souls. Voices surround us, always telling us to move faster. It may be our boss, our pastor, our parents, our wives, our husbands, our politicians or sadly, even ourselves. So we comply. We increase the speed. We live life in the fast lane because we have no slow lanes anymore. Every lane is fast, and the only comfort our culture can offer is more lanes and increased speed limits. The result? Too many of us are running as fast as we can, and an alarming number of us are running much faster than we can sustain.

Speed damages our souls because living fast consumes every ounce of our energy. Speed has a deafening roar that drowns out the whispering voices of our souls and leaves Jesus as a diminishing speck in the rear view mirror. Spiritual growth is not running faster, as in more meetings, more Bible studies, and more prayer meetings. Spiritual growth happens when we slow our activity down. If we want to meet Jesus, we can't do it on the run. If we want to stay on the road of faith, we have to hit the brakes, pull over to the rest area, and stop. Christianity is not about inviting Jesus to speed through life with us; it's about noticing Jesus sitting at the rest stop...

The ugly truth, however, is that many of us do not know how to rest. Actually, we do know how to rest; we simply refuse to rest. [Adrenaline can be addicting!] * Rest is a decision we make. Rest is choosing to do nothing when we have too much to do, slowing down when we feel pressure to go faster, stopping instead of starting. Rest is listening to our weariness and responding to our tiredness, not to what is making us tired. Rest is what happens when we say one simple word: 'No!'

[Yet] Rest is the ultimate humiliation, because in order to rest, we must admit we are not necessary, that the world can get along without us, that God's work does not depend on us. Once we understand how unnecessary we are, only then might we find the right reasons to say yes. Only then might we find the right reasons to decide to be with Jesus, instead of working for him. Only then might we have the courage to take a nap with Jesus."

( * Parenthetical insertion my own. Learned by the experience of a fellow speeder.)
Living in the Grace of Jesus, Pastor Jeff

Dr. Jeffrey F. Evans

Resting in God

Greetings All,

    This weeks "thought" comes from an article entitled "Entering God's Rest," by Marc Brisebois.  It was of help to me when I first read it years ago.  I trust it could be of help to some of you as well. Enjoy.

                                        

   "The fact that the world around us worships productivity makes the subject of rest a little thorny.  The natural man functions from the premise that more effort generally means more productivity, and more time at work means the same... This principle of busyness is the catalyst for a great deal of "Christian" activity today.  We like to be "doing" because it makes us feel like we have purpose.  This activity is not to be confused with fruitfulness, however; and since it is our desire to be fruitful, we must look for something more effective than mere busyness. This search may require us to bring our present state of clamor to a halt.  Unfortunately, 

stopping is very difficult for most to do, and makes others very nervous.  We are often advised to keep moving, as it is easier for God to steer a moving vehicle than one which is at a standstill.  This is a sound principle in physics, but there is no precedence in Scripture...

    Likening the Christian to a sailboat would do more justice to the biblical principles we seek to live by.  The believers responsibility, when it comes to handling the holy plans of the Lord, is to put up the sail and catch the wind of the Spirit, not provide the strength of propulsion...

     Most of us prefer self-propulsion since we have neither the faith nor the patience to appreciate God's timing... The needless toil we often put ourselves through as the result of anxious fretting will usually have us doing much unnecessary labor.  This steals our capacity to rest and be prepared for the labor to which we have been called...

     The writer of Hebrews tells us there is a promise of rest which we may fail to enter because of unbelief (Heb. 3:19)... Working in our own strength can be very gratifying in the short-term but tends to cause burnout over the long haul... In the midst of this toil, the Father may try to speak to us.  Unfortunately our fretful anxiety will deafen us to His voice.  During this time the Lord patiently waits for our own strength to run out.  Then, and often only then, can He begin to teach us about rest.  Unbelief (the inability to trust God) requires 

vast amounts of human effort, ingenuity and resources.  Faith, in order to produce requires only obedience, for when we labor in faith and obedience, we labor in the strength God provides."

 

     It hints of the paradox of faith Isaiah had learned long ago when he prayed to the Lord on behalf of the people: "All that we have accomplished you have done for us."  And again, four chapters later, God confirmed it.  The people of Israel were frantically scurrying around seeking to avert disaster by all their efforts when He spoke to them and said: "In repentance and rest is your salvation; in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it."  (Is. 30:15)

     True believers learn it soon:  The real source of fruitful and restful productivity is to move in the power of God where and when He is moving and bathe it all in prayer.  

     Luther put it well when he shared the secret of his fruitful productivity with a friend:  "I have so much to do today 

I shall spend the first three hours in prayer."         

 

In the Bonds of Christian Service,   Pastor Jeff

 

Dr. Jeffrey F. Evans