Just a little humor to add to your day.

I have recently started to believe that it is just another work of Satan.  I heard a speaker recently talk about the schemes the devil uses to get us down.  He said, “It’s not like Satan is just going leave us alone to give us a ‘breather’ when we are starting to get down; he is going to find the crack and drive the knife farther.”  I think this is where I am.  When I am not focusing on God, when I allow a little bit of negative thought enter my mind, this is when I start to find myself becoming discontent with my circumstances.

 It makes me mad, it really does.  I wish I could live my life with no external influences.  I wish there was no sin and I wish their was no Great Deceiver to play with our minds.  But, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me, and that includes over coming the urge to be discontent with my, to a majority of the world, perfect life. 

 Stop and think for just a minute.  Are you content?  If not, could things be worse?  Let’s look for a ray of happiness in everything we do.  I truly hope to be one of the joyful people in the world someday.  I hope to be a wise, happy old man, but I won’t get there until I become content with the numerous blessings that I have.

I’ve always heard people ask, “What would you do in the heat of the moment?” While moments seem big, this question underscores the reason that some moments stand out in our minds and some don’t: our choices. A moment can either turn into a good memory or a bad one depending on the choice that we make when we have a life altering moment staring us in the face.

We are not always going to make the right choice. In fact, since we are completely imperfect, and most of the time sin bent humans, we are going to make the wrong choice more often than the right one. Often times, I have beat myself up because I make a bad choice whether it be to lie to someone, lust after the hot girl in the car next to me, or whatever it may be. And then I spend the moments following that moment of error just killing myself and thinking about how lowly and disgraceful I am to my Lord. It is around these times when I feel my relationship sinking farther and farther away from God, and I think it is because I allow Satan to take the bad choice that I have made and beat me over the head with it.

The one thing that I have really taken from McManus, which I have heard this before but I don’t think we can be told it enough, is that we can’t change the past. If we blow one moment we can’t change it so there is no point in dwelling on it. We have to learn from it, but we must continue to look forward.

Another book that I am reading, written by John MacArthur, is a book that breaks down the 12 apostles. He does a character study of each, and takes us through scripture and stories to help us glean examples from the great forefathers of our religion. I think that my favorite apostle so far is Peter. And I know that that probably sounds a little cliche, but I pray that I can be more like Peter. Peter had an insatiable desire to do what is right, preach the Gospel, and to impress the Savior. He was the leader of the 12 and the most outspoken, but he is also the one that we see stumble the most. In his quest for righteousness, Peter turned a lot of moments into bad choices, but in the end he came out as one the strongest leaders in the Christian faith. He grew through his experiences and shortcomings and learned to not let Satan beat him over the head with his mistakes.

When faced with a potentially life altering moment, I pray that I will make the right choice. But if I don’t, I pray that I can learn from it and change the world through my experience!

In verse 7, we see the Pharisees and Sadducees show up and we see John’s attitude change. The first words he says to them are, “Brood of vipers!”. Now from any basic study of the scriptures, even the newest student of the Bible will understand that the Pharisees and Sadducees were the leading religious leaders of the day. These were the guys that supposedly did every thing right and they were sure that they were holding the golden ticket to the gates of Heaven. However, John goes onto condemn them even more. He says, “Do not say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ For I say to you that God is able to raise up children to Abraham from these stones.” I love it! I am sure that these guys had never been talked to like this. These guys were the ones going around telling everybody else that they weren’t good enough for Heaven and now John attacks them in a personal way by mentioning their “father” Abraham; he might as well have called their mother fat!

As I read this story I realized one other thing, this group of men that John condemns were also some of the most hated individuals of their time because of their self-righteouness and their inability to recognize their own hypocrisy. How are Christians today any different? In many ways, as a group, we aren’t. We walk around only associating with our little group of “saved” friends, condemning the world and snubbing our nose at the “sinners”, forgetting that we ourselves were once, and still are sinners. The only difference is that, supposedly, we are now saved sinners. But let’s think back to the early “religious” leaders. They had kept the commandments, if anybody had. They tithed and sacrificed with the best of them. So by all accounts, they should have been saved and assured of a seat on the Heaven Train. Unfortunately, though, they had missed the point. Salvation isn’t based on where you have come from, what your profess, or even how much money you give to the church…it is based on a life lived in righteousness and the grace extended to us by the Father!

As Christians, we have fooled ourselves into believing that we are owed salvation because we “asked Jesus in our heart” or even better yet, we actually follwed the example from Scripture and were baptized. But the real truth is that we are sinners saved by grace, it is not because of something we have done (Ephesians 2:8-9). Stupid Christians, we are fools.

I pray that I can live a true and righteous life. I pray that I am not like the Pharissees and Sadduccees and trick myself into believing that just because I do everything the Bible tells me to do, that I am worthy of an eternal life in Heaven. God save me!

Will Prior, Wood, and Miller all be able to stay healthy,
That’s an answer no one knows this year,
but our only hope is to make Carlos very wealthy.

Welcome Coach Pinella to the northside of Chi-town!
He’s a pretty decent manager, he won’t let us down.
I hope the Cubs can win this year, but even if they don’t;
You can rest assured on one thing,
We’re gonna blame the goat!

It’s another year, and all I have to say is, “T.G.I. February 15th and time for baseball to start!” For those of you, like myself, who have suffered a bitter and long offseason after enduring the sting of the hated Redbirds’ World Series victory, the wait is finally over. We are only a few short weeks away from seeing just exactly how far $300 million spent in the off-season will get you. Is Soriano the answer to thousands of prayers uttered since 1908? Probably not, but he should be fun to watch. Whether or not this is the year that my beloved Cubbies will pull it out, one thing is for sure…I will cheer till the bitter end and come October, I will utter the the most common words spoken by a Cubs fan, “There’s always next year!”

GO CUBBIES!

Emerson once wrote, “Concentration is the secret of strength.” Athletes don’t become professionals without being focused, able to concentrate. Students don’t become graduates without being able to look ahead and see the diploma. And believers don’t become citizens of Heaven without being able to focus on the greater call. I like the thought of being able to completely devote my attention to one thing, concentrate entirely on one task. Unfortunately, that idealistic notion is nothing more than a dream, an impossibility. The truth is; on an average day, I am going to have to devote attention to hundreds of different tasks, not being able to stop and concentrate on one of them.

So the question is, how do we sift through the things that are uselessly taking our focus of the things that are important, and devote more time to the things that matter? (If you have any suggestions, please share!) I’m not sure that I have the answer, however; I have a suggestion. Dave has a way of budgeting for those on an irregular salary. The way it works is you make a list of the expense that are most important; generally, housing is first, followed by clothing, shelter, etc. You start at the top of the list and pay off what you can until the money runs out. When the money is gone, that is when you stop paying for things. What if everybody focused their life like this? What things matter the most? Now we are not talking about the things we want to do the most, but rather the things that are most important. I think this would change the world completely. When we stop and think about how we spend our time, we waste a lot of time being selfish and focusing on things that won’t get us to the end goal: Heaven.

My list would probably look something like this:
1. God
2. Wife
3. Job
4. Sports
Etc.

What would yours look like? When we have a list like this we can ask ourselves whether or not the thing we are about to do is going to interfere with something that is much higher on the list. Is this job going to keep me from being able to spend the time that I need to with my wife and kids? Is this girl that I am dating going to bring me down and possibly hurt my faith? If people in this world had their priorities straight, I don’t believe, the level of hurt and anger that you see everyday on the news would exist.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to my babbling. Like I said, I have some feelings and I wanted to get them out, so here is the beginning. In closing I would like to reference Ephesians 2:10. I think this gives us something to focus on. “For wee are His workmanshipp, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”