This is from the book The Reason for God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism by Timothy Keller
Everyone gets their identity, their sense of being distinct and valuable, from somewhere or something. Kierkegaard asserts that human beings were made not only to believe in God in some general way, but to love him supremely, center their lives on him above anything else, and build their very identities on him. Anything other that this is sin.
Having fear what people think of you, is also putting your identity away from Christ. Remember to focus on the Lord. Remember that He will not disappoint you.
Luke 18:27
But he said, “What is impossible with men is possible with God.”
Me: I will tell a story but don’t fall asleep til the end.
Prodigal: I won’t!
This is from the book Small Miracles for Women by Yitta Halberstam & Judith Leventhal
Everybody who knew Hazel Davis knew about her rings. There were four–all beautiful diamonds given to her by her late husband for anniversaries and birthdays.
I’m starved,” Irma said, pulling into a Cracker Barrel parking lot. The women were going to Virginia to visit Hazel’s mom and had traveled 100 miles from their North Carolina homes.
As Hazel scanned the menu, she reached into her pocket–and felt only a hole!
“Irma!” she choked.
The women scoured the parking lot and the van–in vain. As they drove along Route 40, Irma tried to console her friend.
But tears ran down Hazel’s face. “I bet someone saw them and realized they were valuable,” Hazel cried.
Little did she know how right she was. Minutes after Hazel and Irma left, the Reverend Jim Diehl and his wife Karen pulled into the Cracker Barrel on their way home from a trip with their boys. When they saw something glinting in the sun, they stopped–and found themselves staring at diamonds!
These mean a lot to someone, Karen knew, looking at the ring from Jim she wore on her left hand. “We have to find the owner,” she said.
Over the next week, they spoke with the restaurant and police, hoping someone had reported them missing. But Hazel hadn’t. She was too upset and shaken that day to think straight and had left without notifying the restaurant of her loss. And once home, she figured whoever had found the rings had probably kept them.
The Diehls had indeed kept the rings–in a safe deposit box.
Five weeks later, Jim was at a hospital visiting a congregation member and his wife Linda. While chatting, Linda mentioned that her mother’s friend had lost some valuable rings in a parking lot. Jim was shaken. It can’t be, he told himself. He had found the rings 100 miles away. Yet he had to ask where the woman had lost them.
“At a Cracker Barrel in Statesville,” Linda replied.
It seemed unbelievable, even to a man in the miracle business. But he asked for the woman’s number.
When her phone rang and Jim’s wife Karen gave her the news, Hazel wept with joy. And when she learned that her good Samaritans lived only miles away, she had to laugh.
“It’s a miracle,” she told the Diehls when they delivered her rings. “It just goes to prove that there are amazing, lovely people out there.”
2 Timonthy 4:14
But continue thou in the things which thou hast learned and firmly believe, knowing of whom thou hast learned them;
Me: Yes, they are and they do not realize how much hurt they are causing others.
Prodigal: May the Lord open their eyes.
Me: Maybe.
This is from the book Bold Love by Dr. Dan Allender & Dr. Tremper Longman III
Vengeance sought today shifts the offense from the one who committed the sin to the one who is handling the sin with even greater sin. The work of exposure, reflection, dialogue, and prayer is hindered and change made more difficult. How many believers are blinded to their own sin because of another’s inopportune pursuit of revenge? How many unbelievers have been given greater grounds to dismiss the gospel on the basis of petty, almost absurdly small, grudges held by one believer against another? When the gospel is hindered by illicit revenge, Satan smiles. It is a small but significant victory for the devouring lion. Our choice to seek or not withhold vengeance brings sorrow to our Father and, in turn, tears our hearts away from the joy of our reconciliation with Him.
James 4:11
Speak not evil one of another, brethren. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law: but it thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge.
We shall see His lovely face some bright, golden morning,
When the clouds have rifted, and the shades have flown;
Sorrow will be turned to joy, heartaches gone forever;
No more night, only light, When we see His face.
Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation, that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself…
Here is a man who was born in an obscure village, the Child of a peasant woman. He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty, and then for three years He was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never owned a home. He never had a family. He never went to college. He never put His foot inside a big city. He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where He was born. He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but Himself. He had nothing to do with this world except the naked power of His Divine manhood. While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against Him. He was turned over to His enemies. He went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a Cross between two thieves. His executioners gambled for the only piece of property He had on earth while He was dying–and that was His coat. When He was dead He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. Such was His human life–He rises from the dead. Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone and today He is the Centerpiece of the human race and the Leader of the column of progress. I am within the mark when I say that all the armies that ever marched, and all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as has that One Solitary Life.