Lets Talk Snow

Let’s Talk Snow (Pt#1 of 2)

Some people may think it is early but once you get up to or past Thanksgiving the possibility of snow becomes a very real factor to be considered in your daily planning. I know that I am in the minority when I say this, but I really enjoyed this past winter.  So many years we have had to endure the dreadful brown, soaked, worn out earth look from January to April.  Last winter it seemed everyday was filled with snow, shoveling and coming precipitation.  By the end of February I will admit I was tired and pretty set on the hopes of spring and at least a nine month break from the white stuff.  Still, the winter of twenty-ten went fast for me because there was so much to do and often so much to do in a short period of time.

Two things stand out about all of last year’s accumulation: First, the depth of the snow. Karen and I could watch the snow form a pristine white top-hat on our BBQ grill just outside the family room door.  It really was an historic winter for me.  I can’t remember a winter when the snow made so many visits and like an uncaring guest stayed so long....I will remember the depth of the 2010 winter forever.

I doubt any body wants a repeat of last year’s blizzard like conditions. But I must confess I would love to have it.

I always liked the deep snows even if they were a lot of work.  Oh yea a disclaimer may be due on the subject, “The author of this article only speaks for himself and in no way represents the opinion of this communication engine or the snow shoveling public. He does understand the road bound public wants the white stuff only for Christmas and he respects that view.”  

But the deep snow really gets me going.

It says about God in Rom 8:38-39,

For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, 39 Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.  What a promise that scripture is to be to all of us.  Nothing can separate a Child of God from His love. On top of that there will never be a time when those who don’t know or even care to know the Lord will not be able to reach out to him for his love if they so chose.  That is a guaranteed provision necessary for all of us, ‘the love of our God.’

Now that is deep!

Awkward and a Facebook Fast challenge

No other love risked more awkwardness than Christ’s. 

?Can you imagine God becoming man? ?How awkward is that?  Not only must it have been awkward for God to put on human flesh, but think how awkward it must have been for Him throughout his life.

·   I wonder what He felt when He went to His dad’s funeral knowing He  had raised others from the dead. 

·   I often wonder what He felt or thought when He went to the Synagogue and listened to the Rabbi’s trying to "explain the Bible".......you know....the One He wrote.

·   How did He feel when He became a victim of the very people that He created... talk about awkward.

·   How awkward it must have been to be teaching love to a society that was built on brutality.

His love teaches us that we will also have to risk awkwardness in our relationships with others. Sometimes a relationship will require a major overhaul or more personal attention.  It may need propped up with a pinch of love, or maintained with a splash of encouragement, it may need forgiveness received or pardon given.  The virtues that are needed in life situations can make you feel very awkward.  There is a risk when we step out like that. Every relational breakthrough that I have ever had in my life included the risk of awkwardness to bring about the desired results. Awkward comes in many ways, bashful, uncomfortable, unsure, risking looking silly, having to take the first step and apologize, etc.

Risking awkwardness isn’t something you can do on Facebook or Twitter. You can’t bring healing over the internet, or put your hand on someone's shoulder through email. You can be an acquaintance, but not a true blue friend, that comes from personal face-to-face relationships.  You can’t have ‘through thick or thin loyalty', twittering. It is not possible to abate loneliness on a social network through electronic mail.

To create relationships that are built on love, and to have a 'Love That Lasts’ you have to be personal, be there, not be a number, not an e-address.

Today I am going to ask you to take my ‘LOVE THAT LASTS CHALLENGE’ and participate in a "Facebook Fast". [Don't do Facebook? It also applies to computer/TV/Sports overload/Anything time stealing. 

I’m not bashing Facebook.  I use it, I blog once a week, I email and I text frequently. Social media is great so long as it doesn’t become a substitute for really connecting in a deep and personal way with people. 

In fact, I want to spread the 'Facebook Fast' to all my facebook friends.

One day a week I would like you to fast from chatting or gaming on facebook (or any of the above mentioned "time stealers") to get face to face with a friend, spouse, a someone or a loved one.  It may be having coffee or lunch with them, sitting down and writing a letter, card or making a personal call;  maybe its someone hurting and just waiting for someone - you -  to strike up a friendship with them. 

Take the time that you are abstaining during your 'facebook fast' and put a real live person in its place.......?Starting today and ending on Thursday, January 5th, would you join the 'LOVE THAT  LASTS, FACEBOOK CHALLENGE', with all of us here at The SUB. Let's start a relational revolution!

loving

  We've been talking about love the past three Sundays at ‘The SUB’ and, what can I say, I know that some of you are in some very tough patches.  I just want to remind you that when you start to reach out, or start loving, or re-energize yourself to continue loving someone, and see very little results... it is discouraging and sometimes very hard to take.

   One of the things I love to do is to garden...just seem to be wired that way...I like to grow stuff.  Anyway, there's a plant called the Chinese bamboo. It's really emblematic of the way things sometimes go with us.  To grow this thing, you plant the cutting in the ground,  water it, fertilize it, but you see no growth... nothing for the first year. Then you do the same the second year and so on and so forth for sometimes as long as 6 yrs.  Think about it.  You do all that work and put forth a tremendous effort and you see nothing for five or six years, even tho all this time you're weeding, watering, fertilizing and protecting it.  Finally, somewhere around the fifth or sixth year, "Bam"....it sprouts.  The World Book Encyclopedia records that in a single six week period this Chinese Bamboo plant can grow as high as ninety feet and that it can grow three feet in a single twenty-four hour period. It seems incredible that a plant that lies dormant for that many years can suddenly explode with that kind of growth.

   That's the way it is when we start to reach out. Sometimes the results will be slow, but God has you there to be His hands and heart and to be an Ambassador of Himself. As you reach out and love, the Holy Spirit will give you strength to see you through your assignment.

  Focus on fulfilling the purposes of your love.  Don’t be deterred or distracted.  Keep watering, fertilizing, cultivating, weeding and pruning. God will take your love and place it where He wants it, at the rate He wants for those you are reaching out too.

   God may allow you to labor for years with little visible results.  Don’t be discouraged! Underneath the surface things are happening that you can’t see.  Roots are growing down and out, repairing, and convicting, for what is ahead.  Even when you may not see the wisdom of what God is doing, you must trust God. Learn to live with the assurance that He knows what he is doing and that His love for this person runs deep.  Remember Proverbs 19:21:”Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.”

Garbage

Standing on the deck and looking down on my driveway, I see a beautiful neighborhood, a lovely gigantic pine and an oak tree filled with acorns. What a site!  It's from these lovely trees that our beautiful feathered friends from our community fly into and eat their munchies during the winter months. What a sight they are against the foliage and later the snow (eww - enough of that for now!)  Anyway, while admiring those little critters I look down at the driveway and see a huge mess of "stuff".  Deciding to investigate closer, I went down the steps and saw all the shells from the bird feeders. This junk is everywhere - and lots of it!! -sunflower shells and all kinds of leftover millet.  Those little birds are eating all the goodies and leaving me the waste.  Every couple of weeks I have to clean what the rain and wind won't wash away - which is 90% of it.  My little chickadee is cute but not very tidy, the sparrows are downright messy. At least the blue Jays take the seeds up into the trees.  I guess they figure leaving the garbage after dinner for me to clean up isn't too much to do considering the entertainment they provide. That's a bunch of garbage too, but from a birdies' perspective, I guess.
I turned my computer on to figure out how to make a squirrel feeder and I have to sit through fifty advertisements about how to find available singles, cheap car insurance rates or the newest political poll about Obamanomics. Geez just get me the details about the feeder will ya & cut out the garbage....sorry. When its a computer, its spam. The phone rings and its some guy speaking in broken English I can't understand named Lopiano, who's in Pakistan doing a survey about plastic recyclables for a company in Monroeville...it's another nuisance call...and...of course...more garbage.  I think garbage is filling the earth...its everywhere and in every shape and form...you can't even listen to the neighbering kids because some of them rattle off expletives in multiples so fast they can't even stop to breathe. It is a shame that there is nothing but garbage coming out of their mouths. If you turn your TV on, the word garbage is now a synonym for ABC, SPIKE, WE, NBC,CBS,FOX, ESPN, etc,etc,etc. The TV is entertainment garbage. Some of it is pure fiction so you can expect it to be trash and should end up in the "sin bin" but what about the politicians... they are dead serious about what they are saying and it is still garbage. What a shame. Much of what they promise ends up in the waste dump too and these people are trying to be serious.
It makes me think of Isaiah 57:20  'But the wicked are like the tossing sea, for it cannot be quiet, and its waters toss up refuse and mud' (NAU)
Let's bring this to us... In a world full of garbage, as Christians, we should be the real deal. The virtue of God should be exhibited in us......let's remove the garbage and......... "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven." Matt 5:16 (NKJ)

Taking the stone away

At the magnificent miracle of the raising of the dead man Lazarus, (John 11:39) Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Before the great and mighty miracle was to take place, Jesus needed someone to move the stone guarding the tomb away.

It is interesting to me that the Savior who has the power to raise a man from the dead has to have someone move a stone away from the grave.  I'm sure that if Jesus wanted to, He could have spoken the words and that stone would have been cleared out of there. Later in the chapter he tells Lazarus to "come forth". Then He asks the men around him to ‘loosen him and let him go'.  The disciples didn't only take away the stone, but they also unwrapped Lazarus.

It's apparent to me that God is showing us that we play a very important role with Him.  I doubt that there's a man alive on this earth who has ever been converted without the Lord using us "human instruments" in some way to help Him get the job done.

God could easily convert men without us; but that's not His way, He actually wants to use us, to involve us in the work He does. 
Like the tomb, though, there's another stone that must be rolled away before any great work of God can be brought about. That's the stone of indifference. There are a lot of Christians out there who just don’t care.  DON'T BE ONE OF THEM!!  Let Jesus involve you.

The flashlight

I mean it, sometimes it takes more activity to accomplish a simple job than a job should take.  This week I wanted to change the oil in the car.  It was a bad idea right from the start.  First, I couldn't even find the filter.....is there anyone out there with a Chevy Cavelier who knows what I am talking about?  I looked all around the engine, then on top of the engine and finally under the engine till I finally found the thing only visable from underneath the car.  It was totally unreachable by hand. The devil himself must have engineered the place for that oil filter. Anyway, I get under the car and then realize I can't see, so now I need a flashlight.  I got up from underneath the car to go get a flashlight and, of course, the batteries were dead, bringing to mind the little ditti that says, "a flashlight is a great place to store dead batteries". I cannot change the oil filter if I don't have new batteries so I start checking every drawer in the house for two 'C' batteries and am pathetically reduced to stealing the batteries from one of the Grandkids toys to make the stupid light come on. Finally getting my act together, I get back under the car to unscrew the filter and find out that I can't get it out without a special tool.  Thank goodness I put the Jeep out on the street before I jacked the car up to do this oil change.  I head over to Auto Zone and the man at the counter gives me a special wrench just for my car. I go back home, get underneath the car and find out that it doesn't fit the existing filter that is now on the car.  Why me Lord! Why Me! I finally took the car to Radford's and left it with Bill. 
There really is a good lesson to this sorry episode......well, beside the fact that I know I'm no mechanic.  My point is that after all the work it took to get that flashlight working, it still only helped me to see. It did nothing to get the job done.  It only solves a vision problem, it does not fix what is broken. As I thought on this (and the steam and humiliation subsided) I found a spiritual truth in it for me.  The other day when I was reading my Bible, I came to Rom 7:7, "The law is not sinful, but it was the law that showed me my sin. I would never have known that coveting is wrong if the law had not said, "Do not covet." (NLT)
  There are places in the Bible that also help me to see; things like the 10 commandments, the Beatitudes, parts of the book of Galatians and so on, they are there to help me see.  When I read certain portions of the Bible it tells me not to do some things.  We call those things sin.  The Bible tells us not to do them.  If God doesn't tell us what is proper behavior we would never know how we are to act. When I agree that I'm to act in a certain way and I don't, I experience guilt. It's because of the guilt that I realize the great forgiveness of God.  It is the heavy guilt that calls my attention (shines the light), Helps me to see the wonderful grace of God.  The guilt becomes my flashlight it doesn't fix the problem.....it only shows me that I have one. The solution is for us to ask the "guilt-remover", Savior, Healer, God of Mercy, Jesus Christ, to come and "fix the problem". Ahhhh..........

Faith

We just came back from a ‘STM’ this weekend. A ‘STM’ is a short-term mission trip. This one is near Morgantown, WV. It's a great place to work for the Lord outside of our normal Christian area of influence.

I am so grateful that we have this place to minister at.  We can go out for a day and do work for the Lord and still be home in time to work around their house.  We have seen our teens attend every single trip that we have gone on and most of them have contributed on a very productive level. 

  For most Christians it is sometimes difficult to find a place to exercise our ‘faith works’.  We have our church but nothing else.  We find ourselves comfortable inside the four walls and that's our entire sphere of influence.  Short-term missions helps all of us get outside these walls and into the streets where the power of God works in ways unseen in the sanctuary.

 God understood the comfy-coziness of our faith inside the church.  He knew that we would find it easier to exercise our faith inside our comfort zone than to have to believe and trust outside our walls. Listen to what He says in James 2:14-18:

14 Dear brothers and sisters, what's the use of saying you have faith if you don't prove it by your actions? That kind of faith can't save anyone. 15     Suppose you see a brother or sister who needs food or clothing, 16 and you say, "Well, good-bye and God bless you; stay warm and eat well"-- but then you don't give that person any food or clothing. What good does that do? 17 So you see, it isn't enough just to have faith. Faith that doesn't show itself by good deeds is no faith at all-- it is dead and useless. 18 Now someone may argue, "Some people have faith; others have good deeds." I say, "I can't see your faith if you don't have good deeds, but I will show you my faith through my good deeds."  (NLT)

I want to thank the Lord for all of you in the body of Christ, and to those at "The SUB"  that work in our Homeless Ministry and those of you who help in the Storehouse of God operations and  those ministering in the Crisis Response Support Team, those involved with the Fire Department…or those who visit those in the Hospital or Nursing Homes..Let all of us at the ‘SUB’ be a people that shows their love through faith by our deeds.  God Bless.