I was a teenager when I adopted a young pet raccoon. The farmer I worked for had shot the mother and discovered several babies in his hayloft. Each of my fellow farm hands took one home with us. One was promptly executed by the boy’s father, and another fell into a cistern and drowned. I raised mine until she was ready to depart on her own.
That little coon was my best friend for awhile, sitting on my shoulder while I rode my bike all over town. She would wash her own food and play with my younger siblings in the cutest way. But, a second later she would be fiendish in an evil kind of way, sneaking up from behind and biting us on the ear. She wasn’t trying to hurt, but her teeth were sharp! She ate the dog food, raided the garbage can, and was a general nuisance. We soon learned that you can’t train the coon out of a racoon. She was by nature a wild creature who will not be corralled. The older she got, the more closely we needed to watch her.
Paul observed this about himself: “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good dwells” (Romans 7:18). Although we are new creatures in Christ, we still possess a tendency to sin. But we need not be governed by it, for we are united to Christ and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. By obeying God’s Word and yielding to the Spirit, we can be victorious over the nature of the beast within.
Monday night I was surfing the web at home with our newly downloaded Windows 10. This new Windows has a ‘Siri’ type option that keeps popping up to ask if she can help. I keep closing it out because I don’t want her help. Anyway, last night she popped up again. I was waiting for a window to open, so I ignored her question.
At the same time Anita was chatting on the phone across the room to our daughter-in-Law, Layna. Anita responded to Layna, “I haven’t fixed a strawberry pie in a long time.” At that, the oral app on my computer printed out, “I haven’t fixed a strawberry pie” and opened up a search page for strawberry pie recipes. Not what I was searching for, but they all sure looked good.
I wonder if God is listening in on our conversations. If so, I wonder if He really understands about what we’re saying. Does He take our statements literally? If I say, “That scares me to death”, does He dispatch angels to bring me home? If I say, “I could never do that” does He then write us off as people who have no faith? I want God to take me at my word, so I need to choose my words carefully.
42 years ago today Anita and I stood at the altar of the Waterloo Church of Christ and said our vows to one another before God, our families, and our closest friends. Pastors Rod Hall and Dennis Kutzner officiated. We celebrate that occasion every year. But I don’t remember much about it because it was all such a flurry of activity.
I do remember that we had old wooden frame folding seats with dark vinyl padded seat covers and no air-conditioning. Our landlord attended wearing an almost white striped suit. When he arose after the ceremony, his jacket stuck to the hot vinyl and pulled the coloring off the seat onto his jacket and pants. He couldn’t see it, but everyone else could. How embarrassing.
And I remember that I cut myself shaving with a new blade and it wouldn’t stop bleeding in the heat. I was told I could not wear that bit of toilet paper stuck to my cheek. And I remember that Anita looked absolutely stunning in her white wedding dress.
But that’s about all I remember. But I’ve never forgotten to keep those vows. I pledged in front of everyone I valued that I would stay faithful to her no matter what, and I will keep that vow until the day I die. Vows to our spouse and vows to God must be taken seriously.
Here is a letter I received:
“Dear New Hope,
My daughter is in jail at the present time. I am writing to tell you to make every moment with your children count, and grandchildren. Every story time, every Sunday school moment, every prayer, and every I love you. You never know if it will be your last time that you see them. And don’t ever give up!!!
Keep praying every day and every moment you get. Satan is trying to kill, steal, and destroy our children, or families, our marriages, our Government. Do not ever give up on your children. God has placed you in their lives for a reason.
Pray until God gives you an answer. And, if you are married to a Christian, take advantage and pray with each other. For this is a blessing. Don’t take it for granted. And you, my church family, are a huge blessing to me, and I thank God for you, and thank you for your prayers. I love you and may God bless all of you and meet your needs.
Value your children, value your grandchildren, value your spouses, and value your freedom. And never stop praying. God is good, all the time. He sees us through everything, the good and the bad.”
“A large population is a king’s glory, but without subjects a prince is ruined” (Proverbs 14:28).
Can we apply this scripture to a church? Perhaps we could say it like this: A large congregation makes a pastor look like a man of God; but if the congregation doesn’t make disciples, the next generation of the church will die. To see large numbers in attendance doesn’t really make a statement about God. It says a lot about people, but not about God. The sign of a glorious church is when large numbers of people become active in subjecting themselves to God’s plan: Discipling others.
I’m glad that I attend a church where there are enough Christians giving that we can do things for the Kingdom. But, the question remains, who is doing something for the Kingdom. These are days when the ‘All Hands On Deck’ distress call needs to go out. That’s how the Lord’s church can be glorious in these last days.
I’ve been watching a six part series on PBS entitled ‘Who Do You Think You Are: African Americans’. This is a genealogical documentary of 9 well-known African Americans, including, Whoopi Goldberg, Dr. Ben Carson, Bishop T.D. Jakes, and Oprah Winfrey. Using professional historians and local genealogists, the documentary traces their ancestors back for multiple generations, in search of what can be learned of their earliest ancestors, all who were once slaves.
Because a slave holders’ first priority was to demoralize and suppress slaves, they were not allowed to hold any connection to their past life, including their native language or name. They were each assigned slave names, such as one would do with a horse or mule. The African American experience has erased any sign of their roots or ancestors. Because of this, family history among blacks has become a major hobby and professional researchers have become inundated with requests for details on their origins.
Obviously, none can track their African origins with the use of census or sales records, but modern DNA testing can cross all those legal records and identify what part of Africa an individual’s ancestors actually came from. As a family historian myself, I find all this amazing.
Who do you think you are? Do you know who you are in Christ? I am a dual-nature citizen of both heaven and earth. I live in the flesh and I live in the Spirit. I must learn who I am.
I learned to type in Typing Class in High School, using an electric typewriter. When I enlisted in the U.S. Army I was assigned to General Clerk school where I was assigned a manual typewriter. The keys were the same but you had to manually pound the key to hammer the imprint onto the ribbon. Because of my High School typing class, which very few men had taken, I excelled and was sent on to Clerk-Typist School, where I learned the use of military forms.
My first assignment was to Post Headquarters in Fort Knox, Kentucky, where I worked in the basement in the Training Department, using a new IBM ‘Golfball’ typewriter, which allowed you to change the ‘Golfball’ to change the font. The same typewriters were in use when I served in the Headquarters of the Army Security Agency in Augsburg, Germany, during the Cold War.
When I began pastoring in Calvary Chapel of Waterloo, we purchased a new typewriter that had a ‘Pinwheel’ type. The ‘Pinwheel’ spun around for each letter you struck with keys. And you could also change the ‘Pinwheel’ to change fonts. And, that new typewriter also gave us the ability to memorize key phrases, like a signature block, and reprint them with the strike of a key.
Today everything is simplified by using computers. Modern advances in technology are everywhere making life simpler. But there is a learning curve to every new change.
There is a learning curve to figuring out how to live by faith. We learn by our mistakes that God’s word is the true life manual that guides us to success.