Skip to main content

Thoughts From "Streams In the Desert"

Dear Friends,

As I sat in my office today pondering what "thought" I would send out, I grabbed an old devotional book sitting on my desk, and just out of curiosity turned to see the devotion for today. It fit well with the times we are in, so I will share it with you. I also grabbed another from a friend's feed on Facebook. I had seen it years ago, but it also struck me as so very pertinent to the present time. So, today, you get two short thoughts to ponder! Enjoy.
"As they began to sing and praise, the LORD set ambushes against the men...
who were invading Judah and they were defeated." I Chronicles 20:22

"Oh, if only we would worry less about our problems and sing and praise more! There are thousands of things that shackle us which could be turned into instruments of music if we just knew how to do it. Think of those people who ponder, meditate, and weigh the affairs of life, and who continually try to figure out the mysterious workings of God's providence, wondering why they suffer burdens and are buffeted and battle on every front. How different their lives would be, and how much more joyful, if they would stop indulging in a self-centered pursuit of answers and would instead lift their experiences to God and praise Him for them and in them. It is easier to sing your worries away than to reason them away.
Think of the birds. They are the first to sing each day, and they have fewer worries than anything else in creation. And don't forget to sing in the evening, which is what robins do when they are finished with their daily work. Once they have flown their last flight of the day and gathered the last bit of food, they find a treetop from which to sing a song of praise. Oh, that we might sing morning and evening, offering up song after song of continual praise throughout our day."

------------------------------
"You are holding a cup of coffee when someone comes along and bumps into you, making you spill your coffee everywhere. Why did you spill the coffee? You spilled your coffee because that's what was in your cup. Had there been tea in your cup you would have spilled tea.

The point is this: whatever is in your cup is what will spill out. Therefore, when life comes along and shakes you (which will happen) whatever is inside of you will come out. It's easy to fake it until you get rattled. So, we have to ask ourselves, "What's in my cup?" When life gets tough, what spills out? Joy, gratefulness, peace and humility? Or do anger, bitterness and harsh words or reactions come out? You choose. Today let's work towards filling our cups with gratitude, forgiveness, joy, words of affirmation, kindness, gentleness and love for others."
As we know, it's not always a simple choice. Sometimes those negative things come out even when we try to suppress them, or work diligently in the hopes that the opposite will come out. And yes, it's because they are there that they come out. But often they are there (and are so stubbornly rooted there) because we have not resolved the issues that feed them and cause them to come out even when we are trying to keep them from coming out! What we need in such cases is God's grace in uprooting our idols. His grace in helping us to move beyond bitterness, abuse, betrayal and past hurts. We need His grace to help do away with destructive ingrained attitudes like self-pity and entitlement and pride.
For we can try our hardest to act kind and gentle and grateful, but if all those things are rooted deep in our hearts and souls, just choosing to act a certain way will not be enough. For as the illustration points out, if coffee is in the cup, coffee will come out. And it will come out even if we choose or desire or yearn with all our heart that pure water would come out! "Lord, change what influences and controls our hearts, so that even when we are caught off guard, what comes out in those unexpected and unguarded times will be a reflection of your holy presence within us."

Living in His Grace, Pastor Jeff

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thoughts From Horatius Bonar

Dear Friends, If you are like me, you may have had a bad experience in the past with churches that stressed “holiness.” Not because churches shouldn’t, but because the focus was placed on outward conformity to externalisms, or a prescribed set of moralism’s that sucked the atmosphere of grace out of the church. In fact, the more effort-based versions of “holiness” are stressed, the more grace disappears – and the vacuum left in its wake is filled with even more rigid standards of morality and law-based duties – driving all who truly struggle with sin into hiding or pretending. And of all the books I have ever read on holiness (or godliness) none (in my opinion) hold a candle to “God’s Way of Holiness” by the Scottish minister Horatius Bonar (1808-1889). A book I have given to numerous people to read. If you were one who was turned off, or wounded, by a form of holiness based on what Bonar calls, “constrained externalism” or self-effort, I offer you this selection as a taste of w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thoughts From Thomas Wilcox

Dear Friends, Every once in a while, you come across an individual who can say a lot in a very little space. I don’t possess that ability, but Thomas Wilcox (1621-1687) did. Below are some of his profound insights on the Gospel found in the only tract he wrote, originally entitled, “A Choice Drop of Honey from the Rock Christ.” And don’t think that because it’s about the Gospel, you can just brush it aside because you already know it. Jerry Bridges (one of my profs at seminary and a prolific author who passed in 2016) once played us a recording in class of the responses given by best-selling Christian authors at a Bookseller’s Conference in response to the question, “What is the Gospel?” The responses were lacking at best and a couple of them made us wonder if could even be Christian at all. So, read these excerpts from his tract and see if you get what he means and if you agree. (I have updated the language where possible.) Enjoy. “When you believe and come to Christ, you...
Post a Comment
Read more

Thoughts On Lent from Jeremy Linneman

Dear Friends, As we have entered the time of the church year traditionally called “Lent” (from the Old English word “lencten” referring to the season of Spring) there is always the common idea floating around that, “I should probably give up something for Lent.” The question is “Why?” Why give something up or practice self-denial? And the only good answer is: God in Scripture calls his people to do so, it actually benefits us, is intended to benefit others, and brings glory to God. We find this idea stated explicitly in Isaiah 58:6-9. There God says to his people who are fasting simply to deprive themselves of something (to prove their earnestness?) or in an attempt to be, “heard on high” (trying to manipulate God into answering our often self-focused prayers?) “This is the real reason he wants His people to fast: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is i...
Post a Comment
Read more