FIGHT EM OR FEED EM (Continuation of sermon)

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          The sermons found on this blog are selected sermons preached by Rev. Wyrick during a ministry of over 50 years.  This syndicated columnist/minister thanks you for visiting.
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John 14:27

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you, not as the world gives do I give to you.

Let not your heart be troubled,

neither let it be afraid.

            It was said of John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church who arose each morning at four A.M., preached over 40,000 times and traveled over 250,000 miles on horseback, that he never hurried, he never worried and he never let foolish anxieties wear him down.

       Or, as one of the field hands in my first rural pastorate often mused, “When I work, I work hard.  When I sit, I sit loose.  And when I start to worry, I just go to sleep.”  I know he was quoting Satchel Paige, but we both got the message.

       The world is full of people who live on a permanent diet of rapid rush and hurry.  A quick lunch washed down with a daily cup of complaint.  They are run down, keyed up and worn out.  And having put God on the back burner, the griddle they are now sitting on seems hotter.  How, indeed, can a skinny soul deal with the big, fat problems of life?

       Indeed, if there is an answer on how to handle the art of living, it would seem to me that we must first and foremost learn how to cooperate with the inevitable.  We make an appointment and our watch stops.  We go fishing and the only things we catch is a bad cold in a rainstorm.  The inevitable is always with us, even though it is not always kind.  It is why I pray often, “Lord, if I cannot like it, let me learn from it.  At least then it will not be a total waste of time.”

       One day I will die, but I am not afraid because I will but die to live again.  Too often I sin, yet every time God forgives me, and works with me to help me sin less often.  If God be for me, who can be against me.  I believe that.  Just as I believe that----

Once there was an oyster

whose story now I tell,

And about a grain of sand

that worked beneath his shell.

Just one little grain, but oh such pain

For yes, oysters have feelings,

even though they’re so plain.

This oyster, however,

didn’t curse the heavens

for such a deplorable state.

Nor berate the government

Or call for an election,

Or demand the sea

give him immediate protection.

No, he just lay down on a rocky shelf

And talked again and again

to his irritated self.

Saying, “If I cannot remove it,

I’ll try to improve it.”

Then the years rolled by,

as years always do,

And he came to his ultimate destiny,

in a restaurant stew;

And in place of the sand

That had bothered him so

Was a beautiful pearl all richly aglow.

The tale you have heard has a moral.

Now isn’t that grand what

wonderful things oysters can do

with only a morsel of sand.

What couldn’t we do to make life better,

If we’d only begin with all the things

that get under our skin.

       I have a test for you to take to check the height of your anxiety level.  At one end of life’s creative process we can make pearls.  At the other end we can cause infection to ourselves and others.  Most of the time we are somewhere in between.

1.  Are you always judging people, or

praying for them?

2.          Do you allow yourself to be over-

whelmed by gratitude, or are you a curmudgeon of the 1^st degree, seldom even uttering a thank you?

3.          Do you seek conflict, or ways to

avoid it?

4.         Have you found recently that

people are loving you more because you have become more loveable, or loving you less because you have truly become a pain to put up with?

5.         Is peace the presence of something

or the absence of something?

                                ++++++++

CLICK ON  www.go60.us   IT WILL TAKE YOU A NEW WEBSITE FOR SENIORS....click on "Voice" on the home page and then on the list of authors click on Neil Wyrick 

Recent articles Rev. Wyrick has written for this web site are:  

·         Many Kinds of Slavery - But Are They Not All Very Much The Same? (July 2012)

·         Here Comes Summer (July 2012)

·         Spring (May 2012)

·         Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow (April 2012)

·         Wayward and Windy (April 2012)

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