Tasty?

Revelation 3:16 “I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot.  I wish you were either one or the other!  So, because you are lukewarm-neither hot nor cold-I am about to spit you out of my mouth.”

In the youth group my parents love to have object lessons to get the kids more involved with what they’re learning.  My mom decided to do a pretty funny activity one night that involved 10 volunteers.  5 of them held a caramel apple while the other 5 raced to see who could eat there’s the quickest.  One girl took a huge bite out of her apple only to find out it was an onion.  She quickly spit it out and was weary ever since then about eating things that were in any activity we had.  Needless to say, if that had happened to me I wouldn’t be so partial to caramel apples anymore.  Are you the onion Christian?  Do you try to make it look like you’re a Christian on the outside while really you’re something completely different on the inside?  God knows your heart, there’s no fooling Him.  You can’t have one foot in the world and one foot in Christ because that’s being lukewarm.  God says when you’re lukewarm He will spit you out of His mouth, just like the girl did with the onion.  Be something that’s pleasing to the Father rather than a letdown.  

Matthew 15:8 “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”

Ready or Not Ready, That is the Question

Proverbs 9:8 “So don’t waste your time on a scoffer; all you’ll get for your pains is abuse.  But if you correct those who care about life, that’s different-they’ll love you for it!”

I find it very exciting when you’re planting a garden and the day finally comes when the stuff is ready to harvest.  I’m an impatient person so I plant the seeds and give it an hour before running out and checking it, hoping that God decided to give me a miracle and make my plants grow ten times faster.  You can imagine how antsy I get over a week of waiting.  People are the same way with receiving correction in their life.  If someone’s heart is not ready to take in Christ or to take in a correction, telling them or trying to bring them in to that thinking early will only push them away or cause problems.  If you try to bring in corn before it’s ready, it’s useless and you just waste all that time and work put into it because of impatience.  You have to be patient with people and wait for their heart to be ready because it will be useless otherwise.  It will be like talking to a brick wall.  Let God’s timing work on their hearts and don’t let your antsy human nature get in the way of what He’s trying to do with them.

2 Peter 3:9 “The Lord isn’t slow about keeping His promises, as some people think He is.  In fact, God is patient, because He wants everyone to turn from sin and no one to be lost.”

The Eavesdropper

Ecclesiastes 5:2 “Don't shoot off your mouth, or speak before you think. Don't be too quick to tell God what you think he wants to hear. God's in charge, not you—the less you speak, the better.”

Eavesdropping can be fun, exciting, and hurtful.  The people at my work and I always joke about trying to eavesdrop on closed-door conversations.  There’s not a lot of those conversations that go on and when they do happen it always turns out to be a very interesting predicament.  It adds for excitement when days tend to be slow.  A lot of times you have to hear people’s conversations when you really don’t want to.  There have been a few times where I was at the mall trying to shop and couldn’t help overhearing a loud conversation that involved inappropriate content that I could have done without.  Or the times when someone is talking about a really gross topic that makes your skin crawl and you just want to plug your ears while making a la la la noise to drown them out.  Somehow, though, you always end up having to hear about it anyways.  Sometimes we do this with God.  He starts speaking something to us that we don’t want to hear so we plug our ears and try to drown Him out.  But, sooner or later we end up having to hear it anyways.  We should learn from Jonah who had God speak to him but chose to run and hide instead of listening.  It didn’t take long before God had him doing what He had told him in the first place.  Don’t think you’re exempt from God doing drastic things in your life to catch your attention.  He may not have you swallowed by a fish, but you never know.  I would rather not try and find out. 

Matthew 13:11: “Your ears are open but you don't hear a thing. Your eyes are awake but you don't see a thing. The people are blockheads! They stick their fingers in their ears so they won't have to listen; they screw their eyes shut so they won't have to look, so they won't have to deal with me face-to-face and let me heal them.”



Mo Money Mo Problems

Ecclesiastes 5:10 “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless.”

I’m a tightwad, I admit it.  I will hesitate to pay a $1 for something I’m not sure I’ll wear or use.  If I feel I don’t have enough money in my bank account I get stressed, because of this I’ve really had to let God work in me.  Not too long ago I had a super long day.  I needed to make a transfer that day so my account wouldn’t bounce and charge me $30 which I feel is a total waste of money.  Well, I got so busy I spaced until about 11 pm that night and my mom let me know she saw it but it was too late to save it.  The whole next day I was in such a foul mood because I just wasted $30 due to my scatterbrained ways.  In the long run, there was nothing I could do to change that and God still provided plenty of money to cover everything I needed.  Money has a good way of getting to all of us, one way or another.  Whether we have a lot or a little, we always are unhappy about the amount we have.  We need to stop putting so much faith into those dollar bills and what they can do for us and start putting faith into God and what He can do for us.  

Hebrews 13:5 “Keep your life free from the love of money, and be content with what you have.”

Reality

Philippians 3:14 “Friends, don't get me wrong: By no means do I count myself an expert in all of this, but I've got my eye on the goal, where God is beckoning us onward—to Jesus. I'm off and running, and I'm not turning back.  

 So many times in life we see ourselves get to different types of lows.  Whether we are deep in debt, have lost a loved one, or are battling a life threatening illness, we have all felt it.  Emotions go haywire and the world seems to be a huge bully that is taking your life and giving it a good dunk in the toilet.  So, if we have all felt it, why do some of us make it through while others drown?  We have a choice.  Either we can allow the circumstances we are in to destroy our future or we can stand up, brush off, and jump back into it.  Yes, we are all going to feel it but how we deal with it in the end is the deciding factor to the rest of our life.  Thomas Alva Edison once said, “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.”  Sink or swim.  You can give up and let the waves of life carry you off or you can swim against the current until your destination has been made.  Like salmon in a constant upstream battle, we have to push on.  Some of us will make it and some will not.  But, when looking back don’t you want to be able to say you gave it all you had?   

Hebrews 12:2-3 “Keep your eyes on Jesus, who both began and finished this race we're in. Study how he did it. Because he never lost sight of where he was headed—that exhilarating finish in and with God—he could put up with anything along the way: Cross, shame, whatever. And now he's there, in the place of honor, right alongside God. When you find yourselves flagging in your faith, go over that story again, item by item, that long litany of hostility he plowed through. That will shoot adrenaline into your souls!”

Time Well Spent

Ephesians 5:15-16 “Be very careful, then, how you live-not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.”

A friend and I were talking about how quickly we could get ready and how we were too busy to try and take an hour to fix our hair.  This made me stop and think, even though I wasn’t taking a lot of time on getting ready for the day, what else was I spending too much time on, being a bad steward of the time God gave me?  We all have our own priorities and the things we find important.  I worked with a girl who would get up two hours early and be very meticulous about putting on her makeup and such.  I on the other hand get up 15 minutes before I should be leaving the house.  I love TV and will end every day with it, a lot of people don’t really care for TV or will spend much time on it.  Like I said, everyone has their priorities, which then leads us to the point that all of us have something different we need to sacrifice a bit of time on for God.  Do you spend a lot of time hanging with friends or playing games before you’ve spent time with God for the day?  Find out where your priorities lie and if need be, rearrange them to put God at the top.

Matthew 22:37-38 “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.  This is the first and greatest commandment.”

Sweatin' it up

James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.”

Life likes to hand all of us trash.  Of course, it’s not life in general it’s Satan in general.  He enjoys finding things that will tear us down, overwhelm us, and make us feel like giving up.  Have you ever gotten to the point where you feel numb because so many things seem to be happening, one after another?  Ah, yes, I’ve been there.  You’re numb but new things keep rolling in only now the new things don’t affect you because your emotions have disappeared.  During the time I felt like this my mom told me, “You shouldn’t worry about what you can’t change.”  We want so bad to be able to change what is hurting us but we can’t and so it becomes our daily focus of agony.  Us focusing on the random trash we get handed turns any gift we have for a new day into garbage too.  I can’t sit here and say the junk we get in life won’t affect us because it can and will.  But, are you going to let Satan have those changes so he can run you through the mud every waking hour or are you going to let God have the changes so He can turn them into something constructive in your life?  Yeah, life sucks, tell me about it, we all know but don’t sweat the small stuff, it ain’t worth it ese.  

Colossians 3:2 “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”