James Garfield was a lay preacher and principal of his denominational college. They say he was ambidextrious and could simultaneously write Greek with one hand and Latin with the other.
In 1880, he was elected president of the United States, but after only six months in office, he was shot in the back with a revolver. He never lost consciousness. At the hopital, the doctor probed the wound with his little finger to seek the bullet. He couldn’t find it, so he tried a silver tipped probe. Still he couldn’t locate the bullet.
They took Garfield back to Washington, D.C. Despite the summer heat, they tried to keep him comfortable. he was growing very weak. Teams of doctors tried to locate the bullet, probing the wound over and over. In desperation they asked Alexander Graham Bell, who was working on a little device called the telephone, to see if he could locate the metal inside the president’s body. He came, he sought, and he too failed.
The president hung on through July, through August, but in September he finally died – not from the woulnd, but from infection. The repeated probing, which the physicians thought would help the man, eventually killed.
Do you think its possible for Christians to spend too long dwelling on their sin and refuse to release it to God?
Tags: forgiveness, Garfield, probing, sin
Everyone wants a great bargain. Pay close attention to the real deal you get in this national donut store chain ad:
“FREE! 3 Muffins when you buy 3 at the Regular Half-Dozen price.”
Unless there’s a typo in that, it sounds like you can buy 6 donuts at the price of 6 donuts. But the double-talk makes it seem like another deal altogether.
Its kind of like that with Satan’s deceptions. He makes it sound like its a special deal to do this or that. Then in the end, we pay much more than we thought, and the bargain ceases to become a bargain. The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23) and there is no way around it except to repent.
Tags: bargain, deception, repentence, sin
The newspaper reported that a Utah businessman had filed for bankruptcy and declared his debts to be $613,000,000,000. What’s more, the man claimed assets of only $7,310. If all debts were honored, his creditors would receive about one-millionth of a cent on the dollar. There was no way he could begin to pay his debts.
That reminds me of my situation before I came to Christ. I had violated the Lord’s desires for me so many times that the mountain of offenses was overwhelming. But when I came to Christ all that was washed away. My debt was forgiven. Today I stand before Him with a clean slate. Thank God for forgiing my debt.
Tags: debt, forgiveness, sin
We finally got all the drywall completed at our house. Since we had everything tore apart, we decided to move a wall to enlarge our family room and make better access to another room. We had to wait until the heat run was moved and the electrician moved some wires in the ceiling before we could finish patching the drywall in the ceiling where the wall had been.
Because the ceilings of both rooms that are now one had Spanish Lace texture, I wasn’t sure what the patch job would look like. But we had a professional repair it. When he was finished only the color difference was evident. I believe after the paint job we will be totally unable to tell where the wall had been.
That’s a great illustration of the work the Lord does in our lives. It starts with a major renovation, then gradually gets better as the Lord deals with various areas of our lives, until finally, in the end, His love covers a multitude of sins.
Where are you in that transformational process?
Tags: sin, transformation
After the flood at our house, I went to Home Depot to buy some bleach, since its the best way to kill mildew. Wouldn’t you know it, there wasn’t a bottle of bleach in the place; they were sold out! Everyone had the same idea.
While there I noticed the huge array of cleaning products on the shelves. There was a cleanser for everything. Some of the toughest stain problems have simple home solutions you don’t see advertised in the stores. For example, glycerin can remove ball point pen stains, boiling water removes berry stains, ordinary vinegar is great at removing crayon marks, and lemon juice works miracles on rust stains.
But the most serious of all stains can’t be removed by anything found around your house: its the stain of sin. Tears can’t erase it and zeal won’t take away the guilt. What can wash away my sin?
“The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). Meditate on this today.
Tags: forgiveness, sin, stain
As a Christian, I have to see a spiritual dimension in everything around me. So I have to ask the question, what is cancer and where does it come from. Doctors and scientists can put a scientific answer to these questions, but I need to ask them from a spiritual perspective.
In the Old Testament, on occasion people sinned against God, and they were immediately judged with leprosy, an incurable physical disease. Healing could only occur when God reversed the curse through answered prayer. Any leper, then, became associated with sinners and uncleanness because of that pattern.
Somehow that imagery has became transferred to cancer in our modern day. Committed Christians have this perverted concept that anyone with cancer must be a sinner and is unclean to the Lord. There is absolutely no scriptural evidence this is true.
I believe cancer is the result of the fall of man. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). Cancer is the result of Sin, not a person’s sins. Cancer in any form is an Evil Invader bent on beginning the process of death in the human body. I believe we Christians should tackle this invader and cast him out of our bodies. Because he works rapidly, we must act rapidly.
Tags: cancer, leprosy, sin