http://oneadayyourspiritualvitamins.blogspot.com/
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Matthew 5:6
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, For they shall be filled.
This
morning I want to introduce you to two people…and both of them are you – but
the choice of which you are, God has left up to you.
To begin this introduction, I want you
to imagine that it is tomorrow
morning and YOU #1 has been away from home no more than five minutes when
another one of those road hogs with piggish precision almost takes off your
front bumper.
Of course, you lay on your horn. And you honk again, but longer and louder
this second time. At the next traffic
light you pull up beside his car and let him know, by all the unacceptable ways
you know that you are angry with him.
That at that moment, a hanging or guillotine would be too good for him.
At work, still carrying this hot-under-the-collar
mood, you are rude to customers or other office staff, or anyone who comes in
contact with you. The me-first, brutish behavior of the man in that car
has ruined your day and you just can’t, or won’t, let go of it.
At the end of the day you slam the front door as you walk into your
home and wearing a scowl fit for a King who has been crossed by another
kingdom, you take out your lingering anger on your poor unsuspecting spouse.
That was the first you of the two of you.
Now, let me
introduce YOU #2.
Again imagine that it is tomorrow
morning and you have been away from home no more than five minutes when another
one of those road hogs with piggish precision almost takes off your front
bumper.
Momentarily you start to lay on your horn but instead,
you lay down a prayer, “Lord, save me from meeting brutish behavior with more
of the same.”
You’ve held your anger in check and you feel
good about it. This is who you are and
who you have become.
So you continue to pray for that individual
in the other car:
“Dear
Lord, perhaps he’s just had an argument with his spouse. Or maybe he’s always like this; rude and
thoughtless and wearing a “me-first attitude” as if it were a crown and he were
King of the Road. Whatever is his
problem, Lord, I pray for the both of us for life is too short for two angry
individuals to act like fools.
And as a strange, wonderful kind of peace
descends, you continue: “Thank you, Lord, for the privilege of my Christianity
and my ability to sometimes act like that is what and who I am.”
For yes, you can remember the times when you did not
pray. Instead met anger with anger that
did not help the day, nor help the night when you angrily crossed your own
threshold hours later.
And having prayed to Christ and acted a
little more Christ-like, the confidence you have in your God, has grown by
leaps and bounds for you have prayed to be a better person, a Christian person,
and He has answered your prayer.
Part of the peace you feel is caused by the
fact that you are not surprised for He has promised, “I am come that you might
have life and that you mighty have it more abundantly.”
My first pastorate was a rural community in Virginia . When I arrived there in 1954, I learned that
the area had actually only had electricity for six years. Because I was a city boy, it seemed
incredible that they had only enjoyed this modern convenience since 1948.
However,
I was told a story that seemed even more incredible, but the teller of the
story assured me it was true.
A woman had had electricity installed in her house at great
expense but the power company noticed that her meter showed she was using
almost no electricity at all. Fearing that there was a problem she had not
reported, they sent a meter reader to check on the matter.
He saw that the power was indeed working properly and so asked
the woman, “Do you use the electricity?”
She replied, “Of course we do. We turn it on every night so we can more
easily see to light our gas lights and then we turn it off.”
Ridiculous? Yes. Having all that power and not using it.
But some do that with God, don’t they? Saving real prayer power for only really big
problems. Someone is sick and dying, a
major decision needs to be made and prayer time is then ratcheted up to full
force.
Understandable?
Unfortunately, yes.
But why not place this confidence in God for minor moments and
decisions, as well? For there is a real
danger here, this lack of confidence in and prayer toward the living God. If we are not careful, one day those
ever-so-occasional prayers will become so seldom a truck could be driven
through the space left since last a real deep confidence-in-God prayer was lifted
up. And then Bible readings stretch
weeks and months apart.
As I
said in the beginning – God has left the choices up to each of us. So consider where you put God in your daily
life and the results of that assignment.
If you seldom think of God in your busy
days, your confidence in Him will be at low ebb because the best way to weaken
a relationship is to fail to relate.
All that power and
peace available, and passed by.
Sad…truly sad.
It’s not what God has in mind when he made us
“The Lord said, ‘Let us make
man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea
and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all
the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.” (Gen. 1:26,27)
Our God gave us a mind (spirit), so that we could know Him.
Our God gave us a heart (emotions), so that we could love Him.
Our God gave us a will (freedom of choice), so that we could decide to obey
Him.
Believe
it...act on it.
(to
be continued)
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