Devotional Blog

… for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.

Are we missing a key principle to the Christian faith with these, the words of Christ? Do we too often distinguish between those who ‘need’ and those who ‘don’t'? For instance, I am much more likely to help a young child in need than a grown adult. I am further more inclined to help out someone lower on the socio-economic ladder than I.

It is likewise easy to help those that we perceive as being good. The difficulty comes in when we try to help what we consider an evil person or try to help for a second time someone who was ungrateful the first time we extended ourselves to them. After reading these words my imagination took over.

I was walking in the only ‘romantic’ area in our city when suddenly mugged for my jacket. Instinctively, I would chase after the perpetrator. But if I were to truly take the mantle of Christ I would only be chasing this individual to offer my shirt. These thoughts continue- how would you react?

Historians will probably call our era “the age of anxiety.” Though we have it easier than our forefathers, we have more uneasiness. Inwardly we are more anxious. Callused hands were the badge of the pioneers, but a furrowed brow is the insignia of modern men and women.

Our chief concern is physical and temporal. Vast numbers of people actually believe that if we all have food, shelter, clothing, education and recreational facilities we will have attained utopia. Many of our statesmen, much of our literature and most of our commercial advertising support this utterly false view. Some television advertisements lead us to believe that the greatest catastrophe that could come upon a man would be to have a “five o’clock shadow,” yellow teeth or a pimple.

This undue emphasis upon the importance of the body has created a system of thought that is more concerned with the accommodations of life’s journey that with its destination.

- A message by Billy Graham in the magazine Decisions July-August 2004

Discipline can become a rigid system, especially in a religious home. I remember with a shudder a dinner conversation I had several years ago with a man who wanted to inform me of the way he and his family observed the Sabbath.  In addition to church in the morning, followed by Sunday school, and church in the evening, he created a rule whereby his young children were not allowed to play in the remaining hours of the day. Rather, he had religious books for them to read, and that was the only permissible activity for the five hours between services, apart from prayer, which was also sanctioned. He told me the plan with no small self-satisfaction, then followed it by a lecture on how most Christians “do not observe the Sabbath.” I was horrified.

There was something awful in his plan, something severe, made all the more pernicious because it was cloaked under Christianity. What I wish I had said to the man was, “You are violating the Sabbath.” For as Jesus explained, “The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27 NIV)

The context of the verse is that anger and reproach the synagogue leaders had leveled at Him for healing on the Sabbath. Jesus’ is both dismayed and angered in return. For if you will recall, the purpose and intent of the Sabbath is rest, and restoration. “On the seventh day [God] rested” (Gen. 2:2 NIV). In Jesus’ eyes, therefore, healing a man on the Sabbath day is the very fulfillment of its design. Hence I hope you can see that if your family is not refreshed and restored come Sunday evening, then you have missed the Sabbath. And if your religious activities have bound the soul to duty and burdened it with Law, then not only have you violated the Sabbath but you have done so in the name of God.

– John Eldredge, The Way of the Wild Heart pg. 72-73

If we are living an authentic Christian life from the inside out, we can never be ashamed of the gospel. We are living testimonies of its transforming power in our own lives, and we are passionately committed to seeing it work in the lives of others. When we truly love our neighbor as we love ourselves, we cannot help but proclaim this life-saving Word to them. Yet in order to be able to share the gospel with our neighbors, we must be willing to stop and take notice of what is going on in the lives of others.

- Christine Caine, Stop Acting Like a Christian Just Be One, pg. 101

AS we set out to raise the King-in a boy, and in a man– we should begin with the heart of a King. Certainly this is the lesson of David’s life, for when God sent the prophet Samuel to anoint one of the sons of Jesse as the new king of Israel, He counsels the old prophet, “Do not consider his appearance or his height.  … Man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.” (1 Sam. 16:7 NIV).

Having looked for Himself, God chose the youngest in the family, an odd choice in the eyes of men, but He found a man He knew was after His own heart.

– John Eldredge, The Way of the Wild Heart pg. 235

Remember that God had said to Abraham, “You are my man. Through you a nation will be born, and you will have a heritage like no other man that has lived, Abraham. Stand fast. Trust me through all the cares of your life, and I will bring through your life a nation.”

With that promise still ringing in his ears, Abraham panicked. We read: “Now there was a famine in the land.” There was no bread and no meat. Apparently, there was not much water either. Things had gotten tight. So Abraham made a mistake and went down to Egypt.

Why? He got shook. Even though God had said, “Abraham, you stay beside Me at the alter at Bethel, and I will make you a man of God, and through you I’ll give birth to a nation,” he panicked and headed south, for the famine was severe. And when you make a “panic mistake,” you simply make the first one, and it quickly leads to the next, like a row of dominoes. Enter the next!

And it came about when he came near to Egypt, that he said to Sarah his wife, “See now, I know that you are a beautiful woman; and it will come about when the Egyptians see you, that they will say, ‘this is his wife’ ; and they will kill me, but they will let you live. Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may live on account of you.” (Gen. 12:11-13)

Oh, we know that whether he will live or not doesn’t depend on Sarah; he will on account of God. But you see, when you move into Panic Palace, your whole focus gets twisted, and you focus gets twisted, and you forget what God has said. Instead, you give direct attention to what man has said (rather than God) and what people think (rather than Scripture).

- Charles R. Swindoll “Three Steps Forward, Two Steps Back” pg. 108-109

I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord. The first thing to be concerned about was not, how much I might serve the Lord, how I might glorify the Lord; but how I might get my soul into a happy state, and how my inner man may be nourished…

I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it.

– George Muller of Bristol as quoted in John Piper’s Desiring God pg. 142

Colonization of South Carolina

Began her colonial existence and history under the auspices of the Christian religion. IN 1662, a company of emigrants, generally grandees of England and courtiers of Charles II, obtained a charter and settled in South Carolina. IN the charter, it was stated that the colonists, “excited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the gospel, have begged a certain country in the parts of America, not yet cultivated and planted, and only inhabited by some barbarous people, who have no knowledge of God.”

In 1669, a second charter was obtained, and the outlines of its government, under the title of “the Fundamental Constitution of Carolina,” was drawn up by John Locke, the great Christian philosopher, who declared that Christianity had “God for its Author, salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture of error for its matter.”

- The Christian Life and Character, Benjamin F. Morris, pg. 123

C.S. Lewis puts it well: “It would be a bold and silly creature that came before its Creator with the boast, ‘I’m no beggar, I love you disinterestedly.’” If you come to God dutifully offering Him the reward of your fellowship instead of thirsting after the reward of His fellowship, then you exalt yourself above God as His benefactor and belittle Him as a needy beneficiary– and that is evil.

– As quote from John Piper Desiring God pg. 11

Choose your battles wisely is a popular phrase in parenting but is equally important in living a contented life. It suggest that life is filled with opportunities to choose between making a big deal out of something or simply letting it go, realizing it doesn’t really matter. If you choose your battles wisely, you’ll be far more effective in winning those that are truly important.

Certainly there will be times when you will want or need to argue, confront, or even fight for something you believe in. Many people, however, argue, confront, and fight over practically anything, turning their lives into a series of battles over relatively “small stuff.” There is so much frustration in living the type of life that you lose track of what is truly relevant.

The tiniest disagreement or glitch in your plans can be made into a big deal if your goal (conscious or unconscious) is to have everything work out in your favor. In my book, this is nothing more than a prescription for unhappiness and frustration.

The truth is life is rarely exactly the way we want it to be, and other people often don’t act as we would like them to. Moment to moment, there are aspects of life that we like and others that we don’t. There are always going to be people who disagree with you, people who do things differently, and things that don’t work out. If you fight against this principle of life, you’ll spend most of your life fighting battles.

A more peaceful way to live is to decide consciously which battles are worth fighting and which are better left alone. If your primary goal isn’t to have everything work out perfectly but instead to live a relatively stress-free life, you’ll find that most battles pull you away from your most tranquil feelings. Is it really important that you prove to your spouse that you are right and she is wrong, or she has made a minor mistake? Does your preference of which restaurant or movie to go to matter enough to argue over it? Does a small scratch on your car really warrant a suit in small claims court? Does the fact that your neighbor won’t park his car on a different part of the street have to be discussed at your family dinner table? These and thousands of other small things are what many people spend their lives fighting about. Take a look at your own list. If it’s like mine use to be, you might want to reevaluate your priorities.

If you don’t want to “sweat the small stuff,” it’s critical that you choose your battles wisely. If you do, there will come a day when you’ll rarely feel the need to do battle at all.

- From 30 in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff By Richard Carlson, PH.D. pg 77-79