How often we think and hear things like this:
“Something has to happen.”
“It can’t go on like this.”
Impending, unsolvable political conflicts and disease pandemics are out-pacing fiction writers’ imaginations.
People feel like society’s “autumn” is almost over and winter’s blizzards of destruction are coming fast.
There’s a general feeling that mankind is about to reap the harvest of its evil deeds. The harvest is overdue.
It is the “due season.”
As we survey the costs and hindrances to harvesting souls for Christ’s Kingdom, it is easy to feel faint. So many forces threaten the harvest everywhere.
However!
None of these forces cancel the Great Commission to go everywhere and tell everybody.
None of them void this promise: “And let us not be weary in well doing, for in DUE SEASON we shall reap if we faint not!”
That is the promise that assures the purchasing power of the dollars you give.
That is the promise that eases the fatigue on the mission field.
It is the “due season!”
Sunday, March 05, 2006
Saturday, March 04, 2006
TALK IS NOT CHEAP
Not when you think of the price Heaven paid to send us “The Word.”
Not when you remember that by talking we can lead another to eternal life in Jesus.
Not when you think of all the martyrs whose only crime was talking about Jesus.
Not when you feel the struggle and risks that oppressed people will take just to hear the words of life.
Not when you measure the value of a loved one’s last words.
Not when you read again Jesus’ last words telling us to “Go everywhere, tell everybody.”
Not when you can wrap words in light and electricity and hurl them over walls and through iron and bamboo and muslin curtains into the waiting radios, televisions, and computers and change the world.
Indeed, talk is not cheap—or is it?
For all words are worth they cost so little to wrap up in electricity and flood the world with them.
Just a few cents lays this very blog out there where hundreds of millions of computers can see it if they wish
Not when you remember that by talking we can lead another to eternal life in Jesus.
Not when you think of all the martyrs whose only crime was talking about Jesus.
Not when you feel the struggle and risks that oppressed people will take just to hear the words of life.
Not when you measure the value of a loved one’s last words.
Not when you read again Jesus’ last words telling us to “Go everywhere, tell everybody.”
Not when you can wrap words in light and electricity and hurl them over walls and through iron and bamboo and muslin curtains into the waiting radios, televisions, and computers and change the world.
Indeed, talk is not cheap—or is it?
For all words are worth they cost so little to wrap up in electricity and flood the world with them.
Just a few cents lays this very blog out there where hundreds of millions of computers can see it if they wish
DON’T CLUTCH
Power doesn’t do any good until it is released. That’s true of mechanical power or electrical power and especially true of the power of God.
To release is to let go—but letting go is hard to do.
For instance, who can easily let go of their life? Yet in Luke 2:24 Jesus said, “For whosoever will save (hold onto, clutch) his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose (let go of) his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”
I kind of believe Jesus was remembering Abraham and Isaac as He said that. What a moment it must have been when God asked Abraham to sacrifice—to let go of—his son’s life! And it was so much more than that. It meant letting go of his future generations that God had promised would be born through Isaac.
Most scholars believe, also, that Isaac was old enough to understand full well what was happening. He had to be a willing participant in that ultimate act of obedience and letting go.
Yes, that had to be an awesome time of decision. But there was a moment coming that would live forever in their hearts and even now brings faith to our hearts.
Think of it. Abraham keeps looking for the way out that he is sure God will provide—but nothing happens until he takes up the knife and begins to plunge it into Isaac’s heart.
And that’s when it happened.
The instant he and Isaac had truly and actively let go of Isaac’s life, God stopped the knife and revealed the substitute sacrifice.
When they let go it released God’s power to give them back the very thing they had let go of—but in a new way.
Neither of their lives would ever be the same again. They had experienced the awesome power of God together.
The lives of the promised generations that Abraham thought he was sacrificing have each been touched by this great lesson.
When you think about it, Isaac’s life never was theirs to begin with. Did they really think they could have held on to it if God had wanted to take it?
It will never be true that by human grasping and clutching we can hold onto or make more secure what God has placed in our hands.
What a lesson!
But there’s more. Let’s illustrate it this way. Hold out your hand, palm up. Now close your fingers and clench your fist.
Can you see now that you can hold more in an open palm than you can in a clenched fist? So much fuller our lives are when we let go and open up our hands.
This note was found in the papers of a missionary martyr: “He is no fool who lets go of what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Like the song says, “Let go and let God have His wonderful way.”
Don’t clutch!
To release is to let go—but letting go is hard to do.
For instance, who can easily let go of their life? Yet in Luke 2:24 Jesus said, “For whosoever will save (hold onto, clutch) his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose (let go of) his life for my sake, the same shall save it.”
I kind of believe Jesus was remembering Abraham and Isaac as He said that. What a moment it must have been when God asked Abraham to sacrifice—to let go of—his son’s life! And it was so much more than that. It meant letting go of his future generations that God had promised would be born through Isaac.
Most scholars believe, also, that Isaac was old enough to understand full well what was happening. He had to be a willing participant in that ultimate act of obedience and letting go.
Yes, that had to be an awesome time of decision. But there was a moment coming that would live forever in their hearts and even now brings faith to our hearts.
Think of it. Abraham keeps looking for the way out that he is sure God will provide—but nothing happens until he takes up the knife and begins to plunge it into Isaac’s heart.
And that’s when it happened.
The instant he and Isaac had truly and actively let go of Isaac’s life, God stopped the knife and revealed the substitute sacrifice.
When they let go it released God’s power to give them back the very thing they had let go of—but in a new way.
Neither of their lives would ever be the same again. They had experienced the awesome power of God together.
The lives of the promised generations that Abraham thought he was sacrificing have each been touched by this great lesson.
When you think about it, Isaac’s life never was theirs to begin with. Did they really think they could have held on to it if God had wanted to take it?
It will never be true that by human grasping and clutching we can hold onto or make more secure what God has placed in our hands.
What a lesson!
But there’s more. Let’s illustrate it this way. Hold out your hand, palm up. Now close your fingers and clench your fist.
Can you see now that you can hold more in an open palm than you can in a clenched fist? So much fuller our lives are when we let go and open up our hands.
This note was found in the papers of a missionary martyr: “He is no fool who lets go of what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”
Like the song says, “Let go and let God have His wonderful way.”
Don’t clutch!
Thursday, March 02, 2006
EMBARRASSED?
How could we ever defend embarrassed silence when our failure to witness costs the untold their souls?
Wednesday, March 01, 2006
THE PARCHMENT OF MY LIFE
Read the words as the poet pens them onto the parchment.
Feel the parchment come alive as the poem is born in the inkwords.
Fear not, though the haters would slash and torch the parchment, and the inkwords become but ash upon ash; and though the ashes be scattered or buried; fear not, the poem will live on.
It’s clear, the ink and parchment had no life until the scribe shaped the words. Words brought the life.
And so it is that the parchment that is my body was given life by the Word.
Though haters would slash and burn this parchment of my life, like the poem, that part of me that is alive will never die!
Glory to God!
Feel the parchment come alive as the poem is born in the inkwords.
Fear not, though the haters would slash and torch the parchment, and the inkwords become but ash upon ash; and though the ashes be scattered or buried; fear not, the poem will live on.
It’s clear, the ink and parchment had no life until the scribe shaped the words. Words brought the life.
And so it is that the parchment that is my body was given life by the Word.
Though haters would slash and burn this parchment of my life, like the poem, that part of me that is alive will never die!
Glory to God!
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