According to the late Vance Havner, “If
things are quiet and undisturbed in your church, that is not necessarily a good
sign. Things are usually pretty quiet around the sick and the dead and
especially in the graveyard” (Quoted in Paul W. Powell, Building an
Evangelistic Church).
INSIDE OUT
A busy father was disturbed by hi son
who was jumping up nd down on a sofa. The father motioned to him to sit down
and keep quiet, else he would spank him. The son reluctantly sat down but told
his father, “Even though I am sitting down, I am still standing up on the
inside.”
PARENTAL RESPONSIBILITY
Our nation’s youth need live-in
heroes, not celebrities on a cereal box or a rock video. Millions of young
people are hiding behind a chemical curtain of drugs, and millions more are drowning
in the sea of alcohol.
Psalm 11:3 says, “If the
foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do” (NKJV). Crisis in the
family equals a crisis in our future.
BEING A CHRISTIAN MEANS SUFFERING
Jewish author and humorist,
Henry Golden, stung the modern church when he said, “If I were faced with the
decision my ancestors faced—became a Christian or die—I would pick a church
fast. There is nothing to offend me in many modern churches. The minister gives
a sermon on juvenile delinquency once a week, then reviews a movie the next
week, then everyone goes downstairs and play bingo.
“The first part of the church
they build is the Kitchen. Five hundred years from now people will dig up these
churches, find the steam tables and wonder what kind of sacrifice we performed”
Paul W. Powell, Building an Evangelistic Church).
WHERE WERE YOU WHEN GOD BEGAN HIS CREATION?
In one of the memorable lines
of the Book of Job, God asked him, “Where were you . . . while the morning stars
sang together and all the angels shouted for joy” (38:4-7)? Job remained
speechless before God’s probing question. He was mute for the imponderables of
God’s creation.
The story is told of a
scientist who was asked to state his summary of the universe in 150 words. He
responded by writing fifty times the words, “I don’t know.” Job did not even
try to answer God’s questions about the creation and the universe. How grateful
we are that God’s greatness transcends our ability to know and understand. For
if my finite could grasp the infinite God, then it would bring God down to my human
level. And the miracle of miracles, that Job did not know but we can, is that
this mighty Sovereign became my Savior (Henry Gariepy, Portraits of
Perseverance)!
DECEPTION AND LIES
Wherever there is evil, there
is a lie around. Lying takes many subtle forms—exaggerations to make
impressions, shading the truth on an income tax return of compensation form,
lack of complete truth in appealing for funds, to twist a meaning to gain a
point, offering false excuse to cover a failure or protect our image.
Christ who is the Truth calls
each of us to be “valiant for the truth.”
THE FLIP SIDE OF GRACE
I.
With a compliment
to excellence there comes an attitude of intolerance.
II.
With a lifestyle
of discipline there comes impatience and the tendency to judge.
III.
With a broad education and a love for culture
and the arts, there is usually the flip side of exclusive sophistication.
IV.
With an emphasis
on independence and high production, there is the presence of pride.
How difficult it is for those of us who are able to
produce a great deal to be accepting and receiving the grace of others.
John 13, Jesus washes the disciples’ feet.
Capable and frequent givers find it the next thing to
impossible to be grateful and willing receivers (Luke 9:25). We resist grace
when our pride is still paramount.
Pride holds us back and conveys a false image that
says, “I am without need.” If you really want to be a model of grace, get hold
of that killer within you, named pride.
DEATH AND DYING
Long before Elizabeth Kubler-Ross discovered it as a
key to facing death and before modern Psychiatrists enunciated it as a therapy
for stress, Job testified to acceptance as a means of coping with the worst
that life can throw at us (Henry Gariepy, Portraits of Perseverance).
