Unwise

I was reading Proverbs 26 and 10 of the first 11 verses talk about fools and their folly.  It seems he doesn't hold them in very high regard.


1 Like snow in summer or rain in harvest, honor is not fitting for a fool.
3 A whip for the horse, a halter for the donkey, and a rod for the backs of fools!
4 Do not answer a fool according to his folly, or you will be like him yourself.
5 Answer a fool according to his folly, or he will be wise in his own eyes.
6 Like cutting off one's feet or drinking violence is the sending of a message by the hand of a   fool.
7 Like a lame man's legs that hang limp is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.
8 Like tying a stone in a sling is the giving of honor to a fool.
9 Like a thorn bush in a drunkard's hand is a proverb in the mouth of a fool.
10 Like an archer who wounds at random is he who hires a fool or any passer-by.
11 As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his folly.


Then verse 12 reveals who Solomon is REALLY talking too...12Do you see a man wise in his own eyes? There is more hope for a fool than for him.
So if you think fools are bad, be careful you don't think too highly of yourself.

Unloveable

Who is unlovable in your life?  What makes them unlovable?
Across the table...
Across the hall...
Across the street...
Beside you on the bus...
Beside you in the car...
Beside you in the pew...
Behind the turban...
Behind the sombrero...
Behind the pulpit...
Behind the other idea...
Behind the other religion...

Someone said "Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die."

Forgiveness...

Do the impossible!

Threshold Grace

The Lord shall keep thy going out and thy coming in, from this time forth and for evermore. Ps. 121:8.

The Lord shall keep thy going out.
One of the great dividing-lines in human life is the threshold-line. On one side of this line a man has his 'world within the world,' the sanctuary of love, the sheltered place of peace, the scene of life's most personal, sacred, and exclusive obligations. And on the other side lies the larger life of mankind wherein also a man must take his place and do his work. Life is spent in crossing this threshold-line, going out to the many and coming in to the few, going out to answer the call of labour and coming in to take the right to rest. And over us all every hour there watches the Almighty Love. The division-lines in the life of man have nothing that corresponds to them in the love of God. We may be here or there, but He is everywhere.
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It is so easily possible for a man to be at close grips with the world and yet to be ever more and more out of touch with its realities. The danger in the places where men toil is not that God is denied with a vociferous atheism; it is that He is ignored by an unvoiced indifference. It is not the babel of the market-place that men need to fear; it is its silence. If we say that we live only as we love, that we are strong only as we are pure, that we are successful only as we become just and good, the world into which we go forth does not deny these things--but it ignores them. And thus the real battle of life is not the toil for bread. It is fought by all who would keep alive and fresh in their hearts the truth that man doth not live by bread alone.
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The Lord, shall keep ... thy coming in.
It might seem to some that once a man was safely across the threshold of his home he might stand in less need of this promise of help. But experience says otherwise. The world has little respect for any man's threshold. It is capable of many a bold and shameless intrusion. The things that harass a man as he earns his bread sometimes haunt him as he eats it. No home is safe unless faith be the doorkeeper.
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'Thy going out.' That is, our life as it is manifest to others, as it has points of contact with the world about us. We must go out. We must take up some attitude toward all other life. We must add our word to the long human story and our touch to the fashioning of the world. We need the pledge of divine help in that life of ours in which, for their good or ill, others must have a place and a part. 'And thy coming in'--into that uninvaded sanctum of thought. Did we say uninvaded? Not so. In that inner room of life there sits Regret with her pale face, and Shame with dust on her forehead, and Memory with tears in her eyes.  More than one man has consumed his life in a flame of activity because he could not abide the coming in.
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Look at the last word of this promise--'for evermore.' Going out and coming in for evermore. Indeed, they confirm that view of the future which is ever taking firmer hold of men's minds, and which is based on the growing sense of the continuity of life. To offer a man an eternity of music-laden rest is to offer him a poor thing. He would rather have his going out and his coming in. Yes, and he shall have them. All that is purest and best in them shall remain. Hereafter he shall still go out to find deeper joys of living and wider visions of life; still come in to greater and ever greater thoughts of God. 

Ainsworth, Percy C.. The Threshold Grace / manybooks.net. 

Yes, LORD, bless my going out and coming in.  Bless those times with neighbors, friends, shop owners, co-workers.  And bless my time at home alone and with family.  May we feel your presence at all times.

God is our refuge.

Trust in Him at all times, ye people. Pour out your heart before Him. God is a refuge for us. Ps 62:8

More thoughts from Percy Ainsworth.

God is a refuge for us. That is the great discovery of faith. That is the merciful word that comes to be written so plainly in the life that has formed the habit of faith. God our refuge. It may be that to some the word 'refuge' suggests the occasional rather than the constant need of life. But the refuge some day and the faith every day are linked together. A thing is no use to you if you cannot find it when you want it. And you cannot find it easily if it be not at hand. The peasant built his cottage under the shadow of his lord's castle walls. In the hour of peril it was but a step to the strong fortress. 'Trust in Him at all times.' Build your house under the walls of the Eternal Help. Live in the Presence. Find the attitude of faith, and the act of faith will be simple. Trust in Him through every hour, and when a tragic hour comes one step shall take you into the innermost safety.

Ainsworth, Percy C.. The Threshold Grace (Kindle Locations 104-110). manybooks.net.

What do you think of his analogy?  The peasant builds outside to have some independence, some freedom.  My thought is I want to build my cottage within his walls.  God should be my refuge at all times.

Trust in Him always

Found collection of sermons by Percy Ainsworth. Most are from the Psalms. Here is an excerpt from his thoughts about Ps. 62:8 - "Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge"

Faith is not an act, but an attitude; not an event, but a principle; not a last resource, but the first and abiding necessity. It is the constant factor in life's spiritual reckonings. It is the ever-applicable and the ever-necessary. It is always in the high and lasting fitness of things. There are words that belong to hours or even moments, words that win their meaning from the newly created situation. But faith is not such a word. It stands for something inclusive and imperial. It is one of the few timeless words in earth's vocabulary. For the deep roots of it and the wide range of it there is nothing like unto it in the whole sweep of things spiritual. So the 'all times' trust is not for one moment to be regarded as some supreme degree of faith unto which one here and there may attain and which the rest can well afford to look upon as a counsel of perfection. This exhortation to trust in God at all times concerns first of all the nature of faith and not the measure of it. All real faith has the note of the eternal in it. It can meet the present because it is not of the present. We have grown familiar with the phrase, 'The man of the moment.' But who is this man? Sometimes he is very literally a man of the moment--an opportunist, a gambler with the hours, a follower of the main chance. The moment makes him, and passing away unmakes him. But the true man of the moment is the man to whom the moment is but one throb in the pulse of eternity. For him the moment does not stand out in splendid isolation. It is set in its place between that which hath been and that which shall be. And its true significance is not something abiding in it, but something running through it. So is it in this great matter of faith. Only the faith that can trust at all times can trust at any time. The moment that faith heeds the dictation of circumstance it ceases to be faith and becomes calculation. All faith is transcendent. It is independent of the conditions in which it has to live. It is not snared in the strange web of the tentative and the experimental. He that has for one moment felt the power of faith has got beyond the dominion of Time.

Click here to download the entire collection. 

Jesus Isn’t Contained in Our Boxes

Read a post today by Frank Viola.  He mentions the road to Emmaus, so I thought I'd had it here.

Do you remember the disciples who walked on the road to Emmaus? Their hopes were shattered by Jesus’ horrible death. Suddenly, the resurrected Christ began walking beside them, yet their eyes were blinded from recognizing Him.
However, when He engaged in the very simple gesture of breaking bread (something He had done frequently before them), their eyes were opened.
He then quickly disappeared from their sight.
These stories hold a critical insight. You cannot cling to the Christ you know today. He will vanish from your midst. Jesus Christ is an elusive Lover. Seeking Him is a progressive engagement that never ends. He doesn’t dance to our music. He doesn’t sing to our tune.

Click here to read the entire post.

May our God box be forever expanding.  After devoting most of his life to spreading the gospel, the apostle Paul still wanted to know Christ more. Amen!!

Knowledge vs Relationship

A follow-up on my last post...

The disciples on the road to Emmaus were given the same choice as Adam and Eve. The same choice we are given everyday. Do we desire knowledge about God or a relationship with God.  Adam and Eve chose knowledge. The disciples desired more and even though Jesus had shown them many things from the scriptures, they compelled him to stay. This is when he sat with them, broke the bread, blessed it, and revealed himself.

I pray to make this decision every minute of every day.