Witness Post

I know it's been awhile, but I have a couple of God moments I want to share.
On our return from Montana a couple of weeks ago we detoured south to spend a few days with some friends from Elkhart KS. One of the friends we visited, Jay & Sondra, have a dog that is 106 in dog years named Lady. Lady stays very close to Sondra. In fact, if she happens to fall asleep (which is quite often) and Sondra leaves the room, when she awakes she begins to search diligently from room to room until she finds her again, and then she lays back down close to wherever Sondra may be. God wants us to act the same way. Every time we realize that we're not right next to Him, we should search diligently for Him, and not rest until we have gotten back into His Presence.

Here's another God moment. I am walking as often as possible in a park next to our house. At the top of the hill I noticed a sign post a little ways off the trail that reads,'Witness Post - Survey Boundary Marker'. I believe God wants our lives to be witness posts for those without Christ in their lives. Our lives are to be the boundary markers for His righteousness & love. People ought to be able to walk past us and that we stand for something in life greater than ourselves - Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks for reading.
PJ

Prayer for Fred

My wife left this morning for Montana. The Dr's there called the family home to be with their dad who has had a history of heart problems, and recently has gotten much worse. Now mind you, this happened 4 years ago, and once everyone got there, her dad decided he would go ahead and live a little longer. Maybe the same thing will happen again, and we'll all get to enjoy Fred's wit and wisdom a while longer. If this is indeed his time to meet Jesus face to face, he is ready, as is the family. But even though all are ready, the sorrow & lost are still there to walk through. So please take a moment and say a prayer for Carole & her family. Thank you.
PJ

The Lost & Found Room

At a recent meeting, held in a church, our ministry team met in a room in the back of the church, with a Lost & Found placard on the door. When I entered the room, I noticed the 4 cement weights with attached ropes setting in the corner. Many thoughts ran through my head, but this is the one I would like to share with you today. Until we discover just how desperately we all need Christ's forgiveness, and what it means to walk through life with Him as our Lord, we all go through this life somewhat lost, looking for answers to life's questions with very little success. And every time we make a wrong choice because of the lies we believe, it begins to feel like those blocks of cement looked. Only instead of setting in the corner, they are fastened to our hearts & souls, weighing us down. What was needed was for us to find Christ. When we do, and we accept His payment for our wrong life choices, that weight is removed and cast aside. For me, that's what that room represented. The Lost & Found room where the weights of life's wrong choices are discarded. I hope you have discarded all of yours. Blessings.
PJ

Chipmunk in the Squirrel Cage

Last week we experienced a cold snap, like 1 degree, that lasted for a couple of days. About 5 days later my wife went over to the churches parsonage which has been vacant for several months to check on things. The ice cascade out of the back door provided her with an initial response that something was wrong, and when she opened the door and heard water running her fear was quickly confirmed. Evidently, a water pipe in the upstairs bathroom ruptured do to the cold, sending water raining down in the basement and through the bathroom wall into the kitchen and dining room area. The basement sump pumps are all that saved it from being worse that it is. As it is the false ceiling in the basement is now all over the floor, the carpet is soaking wet, & the drywall in the downstairs bathroom is no longer dry and rests on top of the sink & stool.
Once I found the water shut off and contacted the insurance company, we started the clean up process. I called a national company that deals with such things and met them at the parsonage the next day. But when I tried to turn up the heat to help dry it out, we discovered that the furnace wasn't working. AH-HA the reason the pipes froze! So I called our furnace guy, who came right over. What he found was a chipmunk, now dead an decaying, stuck between the blower fan (i.e., squirrel cage) and the blower fan housing, effectively locking up the furnace blower so that even though the furnace would come on, it wouldn't heat the house. The rascal had entered through the dryer vent, chewed through the plastic flex hose, found its way into the heater vents to the furnace, chewed through the filter, only to come to his demise when the blower kicked on, I'm sure quite unexpectedly.
OK, that got me thinking about us and God. There are times when we go vacant from God. We get comfortable with our relationship and slowly stop spending time in His Word every day. Or maybe there's that part of our life we withhold from Him because we're not ready to give Him control of it yet. There's several ways I think we go 'vacant' from our relationship with God. Then, in our vacant state, 'trouble' shows up in the most adorable fashion, and appearing quite innocent begins to scamper around in our 'vacancy'. And before you know it, havoc is being reeked in our 'vacant area' at a great personal cost. And instead of being on fire and full of light, we end up the frozen chosen wandering in the dark.
PJ

Popcorn

Everyone in my family loves my popcorn. The other day when I was making it I had these thoughts about popcorn and us.
A kernel starts off hard & rather insignificant, looking like every other kernel of corn in the bag. And basically it could stay like that until it rots.
BUT, when you take that kernel of corn and apply a lot of heat to it, it erupts into a unique and tasty morsel with a purpose. It doesn't look anything like it did before it popped. And you can now do all sorts of delicious things with it. You can enjoy it just as it is, or flavor it with an abundance of toppings and coatings to make it even more enjoyable. You can take a bunch of it and make many various designs and adaptations. (I'm sure there a few thoughts I'm missing so feel free to add them in a response.)
Now, it's not too difficult to figure out the correlation between a kernel of popcorn & us! We all start out basically like everyone else, and unless something special & dramatic happens to us, we end up rather hard of heart until the day we die.
BUT, if we encounter the heat of the Living Lord, which is quite special & dramatic, we erupt into a unique individual with a special purpose. We don't look or act anything like we once did. And once transformed, the Holy Spirit 'flavors' us to God's liking, and shapes us to His design.
I hope you experience the heat of Christ in 2009 and explode into the unique individual God has always intended for you to become, fully flavored by the Holy Spirit.
PJ

Could It Be?

For those don't know and read my blog, our youngest son, His wife and their daughter Shaylin, who's 2 going on 3 have been staying with us to help get them over a rough place financially. That means I have had the privilege of spending a lot of time with my grand daughter. She has even given me her cold this week, which doesn't seem to matter to me in the least.
A phenomenon has taken place in my life as result of their staying with us. I find myself looking for Shay every morning before I go to work. I'll steal a peek towards her room to see if she's up and moving around. I listen for the pitter-patter of her tiny padded feet coming down the hall. I even dally, knowing she will soon wake up, and come to see us off to work with hugs and kisses and whispers of "I wuv you pap-paw." in my ear. Pretty cool stuff, and what life is suppose to be all about.
Then a couple of days ago I began to wonder, 'Could it be God looks for us as we start every day?' Peeks our way every morning to see if we're up yet? Listens for the sounds of rustling & hustling around? Waits for us to come to Him and whisper our words of affection up to Him? Could it be? I know what I think, how about you?
PJ

The Gord

I will probably use the lesson of the gord in a upcoming children's message, but it's pretty good, so I wanted to share it here too. Our church was decorated for the fall with corn and pumpkins and gords. It was really pretty neat. In the basement stairwell was a box of extra gords. One day I noticed one was covered in mold. Concerned it would contaminate the whole box full, I went and picked it out of the box. I was instantly aware of how light it was, like it was hollow. I brought it back to my office & set it on a shelf, figuring there was probably a lesson in it somewhere. The next time I went down to the basement, I began to wonder if the other gords like it were also hollow. I went and found one, and to my surprise it wasn't. That's when I got the lesson. If your life is empty and void of the things of God, especially Christ; it will most likely end up like the mold riddled gord - contaminating all it comes in contact with, dying inside & out! But if your life is full of the things of God, especially Jesus Christ; you'll be healthy inside & out, and a joy to other the other 'gords in the box'
PJ