more than just stuff?

In the 80’s, Carl Sagan taught us that we “are all star stuff”. That is, we are made of the same components as the stars. We are star children, in other words. In fact that phrase was popular a few decades ago.
But is that all we are? Is that our essence? Are we simply animated carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and the other elements that comprise our bodies? Or is there more to us?
If we are simply “star stuff” then there is nothing special about humans? According to Gods Word we are more than just star stuff. Read this verse to remember your worth as the apex of Gods creation:
“oh yes you shaped me first inside then out-you formed me in my mothers womb. I thank you High God-you are breathtaking. Body and soul, I am marvelously made. I worship in adoration – what a creation. You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body. You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you. The days of my life all laid out before I’d even lived one day.”

These verses from Psalm 139 declare the majesty of mankind but that majesty only exists because of the great God who created us. David is worshipping God by writing this Psalm. By doing that he is acting like “God stuff” and not “star stuff.”. Do you act like mere star stuff or do you live your life in such a way that shows that you are fearfully and wonderfully made by Almighty God? Think about it…….

satisfaction guaranteed

As I sit here in a grocery store in Lowell, MI, waiting for some pictures to print, I am also doing one of my favorite activities- people watching. As the droves pass by in this quaint store I am amazed at the paradox before me – signs are posted on walls and written on products that guarantee customer satisfaction, up to 100% even. Yet the faces of the people project emotions that are anything but satisfied. Instead I see anger….irritation….despair….
It seems like the bold declaration that the products claim to offer rings hollow. No true joy actually comes from anything made by human hands. Only temporary happiness which is fleeting at best. So maybe we as humans try to find satisfaction from the wrong sources.

The question I find myself asking is “how do others view me when I pass by?”"What am I projecting to them?” Anger? Despair? Or instead perhaps Hope? Or Joy?

What are you projecting to others?

Something to think about….

love that will not let me go

A beautiful song dripping with truths from God’s Word. Hold on to these truths when days are great, and when it seems all hope is lost.

Love That Will Not Let Me Go (Justice Album Version) – Steve Camp

fight the good fight

This is the morning devotional from Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  Very encouraging….

In every believer’s heart there is a constant struggle between the old nature and the new. The old nature is very active, and loses no opportunity of plying all the weapons of its deadly armoury against newborn grace; while on the other hand, the new nature is ever on the watch to resist and destroy its enemy. Grace within us will employ prayer, and faith, and hope, and love, to cast out the evil; it takes unto it the “whole armour of God,” and wrestles earnestly. These two opposing natures will never cease to struggle so long as we are in this world. In The Pilgrim’s Progress, the battle of “Christian” with “Apollyon” lasted three hours, but the battle of Christian with himself lasted all the way from the Wicket Gate in the river Jordan. The enemy is so securely entrenched within us that he can never be driven out while we are in this body: but although we are closely beset, and often in sore conflict, we have an Almighty helper, even Jesus, the Captain of our salvation, who is ever with us, and who assures us that we shall eventually come off more than conquerors through Him. With such assistance the new-born nature is more than a match for its foes. Are you fighting with the adversary to-day? Are Satan, the world, and the flesh, all against you? Be not discouraged nor dismayed. Fight on! For God Himself is with you; Jehovah Nissi is your banner, and Jehovah Rophi is the healer of your wounds. Fear not, you shall overcome, for who can defeat Omnipotence? Fight on, “looking unto Jesus”; and though long and stern be the conflict, sweet will be the victory, and glorious the promised reward.

“From strength to strength go on;
Wrestle, and fight, and pray,
Tread all the powers of darkness down,
And win the well-fought day.”

“For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.”

Galatians 5:17

abortion? tiller? lost airplanes? bad economy? is god in control?

Is God in control?  That is the question that many people (including Christians) seem to be asking, yet I wonder if all of those asking really stick with the question long enough to find a sufficient answer.  It boils down to a matter of God’s sovereignty.  Although I have grieved for years over the senseless deaths of millions of unborn babies, I likewise grieve over the senseless slaying of George Tiller.  My heart has compassion towards his family, and I ache with the thought that he now is standing before God Almighty – answering for some horrible choices he made during his lifetime, with no chance to now commit his life to Christ.

Yet, all of that said, God has allowed his death to take place for whatever reason.  That is God being sovereign.  Try this on for size though….God has likewise allowed the senseless death of millions of unborn babies.  That is also God being sovereign.  He didn’t cause their deaths, but He HAS allowed them.  He could have stopped it, but He has not.  That is God being sovereign.  Not weak.  Not inept.  But sovereign.

The economy is bad, so they say.  God has allowed it.  Sovereignty.

228 passengers seemingly dead, most likely dying on impact or drowning in the Atlantic Ocean.  God has allowed it. Sovereignty.

An Illionois pastor gunned down on a Sunday morning, in church.  God has allowed it. Sovereignty.

Read this piece by the great theologian Donald Barnhouse:

My God knows how many rain drops are going to fall on this world in this year. My God knows how many leaves are going to be on the trees of all the forests of this world. My God loves me so much that the very hairs of my head are numbered. A child once said to its mother, “Do you know how many hairs are on my head?” “No, my child.” “Then you do not love me as much as God does,” and the mother said, “No, my child, I do not.” It is well to remember that the hairs of our head are numbered, whether we have a full head or a bald head.

There is a great truth here. If you do not understand these things you will think God has let things get out of hand, and the devil is doing something outside God’s power. But that is not true. H. G. Wells once said, “Either God has the power and does not care, or cares and does not have the power.” But that is not true. There is the third alternative. God cares; God could have stopped the war and the bombing if He had wished. God could destroy Satan today if He wished. If you do not believe that, you have not an omnipotent God. I believe that it is of the very foundation of our Christian Faith that we should know what kind of a God we are dealing with.

Did God create all things? Has God all power? Has God all knowledge? Did God create Lucifer; and did He know he was going to become Satan? Could He have made him otherwise if He had wished? Certainly, you say. You do not understand; neither do I. If I could understand I would be as God, and there would be no need for faith. Faith is to believe what you do not understand: that is the essence of faith and love.

A story was told in one of our magazines by a marriage counselor. A young woman went to a marriage counselor in Boston and said, “I am afraid my marriage is going to break up. I am sure my husband is lying to me. He tells me he is working overtime; but I have been past the building where his office is, and there is no light. I have telephoned, and there is no answer; and he does not bring home any extra money.” The marriage counselor suggested that the husband should be brought in for interview. So the wife broached it to her husband, and when the whole story was told and he gave the true and right explanation, the young wife said, “How was I to know that you were working in a back room where the phone was cut off? How was I to know that you were saving the extra money to get me a fur coat for Christmas?” And he said, “That is where faith comes into love.” And that is true of all our relationships.

What God said to Moses, and what I said to the young minister, was a great fact: and it is true for all of us. Our Father knows these things. He knew before Job was struck by all the disasters that came upon him; He planned every detail in Job’s saga. The devil was the agent—God uses the devil. Don’t be disturbed when you read that there was come an evil spirit from the Lord; no evil spirit ever did anything that God had not planned for him to do. That is terrible for some people who look at things superficially; but if you do not believe it, if you think the devil is out of hand, and God is biting His fingernails and saying, “I do not know what to do about it,” you are wrong. We do not have that kind of God!

Let me tell you a parable, which I wrote some years ago. A man had a beautiful estate, with magnificent trees on it. But he had a bitter enemy, who said, “I will cut down one of his trees; that will hurt him.” In the dark of the night the enemy slipped over the fence and went to the most beautiful of the trees, and with saws and axes he began to work. In the first light of morning he saw in the distance two men coming over the hill on horseback, and recognized one of them as the owner of the estate. Hurriedly he pushed the wedges out and let the tree fall; but one of the branches caught him and pinned him to the ground, injuring him so badly that he died. Before he died he screeched out, “Well, I have cut down your beautiful tree,” and the estate owner looked at him with pity and said, “This is the architect I have brought with me. We had planned to build a house, and it was necessary to cut down one tree to make room for the house; and it is the one you have been working on all night.” Do not forget that anything the devil is working at, he is but cutting down a tree God had planned to cut down; he never did anything outside the overall plan of God, for God is omnipotent and omniscient and victorious.

Someone says, Do you mean that God would allow a young minister to have a retarded child? Yes, He would. Do you think God would make someone be blind? Well, the Lord Jesus was asked by His disciples, “Who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?” and the Lord Jesus said, “Neither: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Do you mean, you say, that God Almighty let a man be blind for thirty or forty years so that Jesus could perform a miracle on him? Certainly. Do you not believe in the sovereignty of the general staff of the army? Our joint armies, American and British, were all waiting in England in 1944 for D-Day. At that time by common consent one man had been chosen to say “This is the day,” and Eisenhower was in supreme and sovereign command. Nobody questioned his right to say, “This company shall go there and land under the emplacement and die.” “This one shall go there and do this.” We recognize the right of a commanding general to say to one man, “Take this map and find this bridge; take a parachute, fly over, drop down over the bridge and destroy it, and we will give your widow the Victoria Cross,” and to another, “That lorry over there is bogged down in the mud; go and blister your hands and get it out.” If a general may do this, please allow God Almighty to do what He wills. He knows what He is doing. He has a vital plan for all that is going on, and we are part of it, although we do not know why. There were many men in the army who did not know where they were going; whether they would be sent to Norway, Greece, or anywhere else. They recognized the right of their officers to send them where they would. Shall we not recognize the right of God to be sovereign?“

Is He in control of all of these things?  100 %.

all is well

From Moments with You by Dennis Rainey:

“You who have shown me many troubles and distresses will revive me again.”
Psalm 71:20

I’m sure you get the same kind of phone calls and emails that we do–reports about friends and family members facing difficulty. Perhaps it’s an upcoming surgery or the loss of a job. On occasion it may involve something much more severe–a relative has been diagnosed with cancer or a friend’s child has unexpectedly taken his life.

Frequently when these messages show up on our message machine or in our in-box–those times when you really don’t know what to say or how to pray–I think of a moment Barbara and I shared in the county of Cornwall on the southwest coast of England. We had come across a little church on a windswept hillside, where a section of the front lawn was set apart for a cemetery filled with old, uneven tombstones, many dating back several centuries.

One tombstone bore the names of an entire family. Judging from the dates, it seemed the mother had died three weeks after giving birth. The child’s name, John, also appeared, having died before he turned one. Lastly came the father’s name, indicating he had lived not much more than a year after his son’s death.

Etched beneath their names–in letters we could barely make out–was this simple perspective: “We cannot, Lord, Thy purpose see, but all is well that’s done by Thee.”

Here was a little family that didn’t last long but had apparently responded to some tough circumstances with a resilient faith in God. They trusted that God knew what He was doing. And whenever my friends and family face problems today, I often tell them about that little Cornish hillside, where God reminded me that because He is good, “all is well.”

Is that how you respond to life’s circumstances?  Will your epitaph speak the same message when your body lies beneath the earth?  Will others say of you, that despite the harshness that life can bring, that you remained steadfast and unwavering in your trust in Almighty God?

a mighty fortress is our god

This selection is from Chuck Swindoll:

“Music” wrote Martin Luther,” is a gift and grace of God.  Through its majestic harmonies, it weaves the chords of courage and comfort.  With its mighty crescendos, it plants determination and discipline into our souls.  Of all the different, marvelous types of music, none makes me think deeper, stand taller, sing louder than the great hymn of the Reformation, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God.”

I love this grand old hymn.  In a day when good, solid doctrine from the Scriptures is often lacking in our music, this great piece is dripping with biblical truth.  Luther tugs on our heart’s strings when he proclaims God as our helper and Jesus as the man on our side.  It is He who will win our battle!

Anyone who knows Martin Luther’s story knows his battle for truth.  His name is a synonym for courage and determination – the same character qualities we need in our battles.  In a day when warriors are scarce and surrender is more popular than firm convictions, this hymn brings us back to those needed reminders.

Read through the words slowly…thoughtfully.  Even without the majestic chords building our anticipation, the message will stir your heart.  Though Luther penned these lyrics almost five hundred years ago, it’s amazing how up-to-date they really are!  His struggles mirror our own.  And his remarks about demonic assaults are as current as this morning’s newspaper.

I often sing these words to myself or quote the lyrics when my courage needs undergirding.  The song never fails to remind me where I need to go when I’m afraid or in Whom I need to place my trust.  My determination is strengthened when I sing, “We will not fear for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us.”  God is our mighty fortress.  Our bulwark.  Our helper.  We can trust Him!

Such a stirring song.  I listen to if often, just like Chuck.  It reminds me of one of my favorites verses, Psalm 46:1 “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear.” Here is Steve Green nailing the power and essence of this classic hymn:

meeting God

This piece of great thought comes from the pen of Elisabeth Elliot:

“The Bible is God’s message to everybody.  We deceive ourselves if we claim to want to hear His voice but neglect the primary channel through which it comes.  We must read His Word consistently.  We must obey it.  We must live it, which means reading it throughout our lives.

We read that our Heavenly Father actually looks for people who will worship Him in spirit and in truth.  Imagine!  God is looking for worshipers.  I don’t know about you, but as for me, I need help in worshiping God.  Nothing helps me more than reading the Psalms.  Here we find human cries – of praise, adoration, anguish, complaint, petition.  There is an immediacy, an authenticity, about those cries to God.  They speak for me to God – that is, they say what I often want to say, but for which I cannot find words.”

Make it your desire today to dive into the Scriptures.  Read it with a purpose.  Start with the Psalms if you are unsure as to where to begin.  Read slowly, thoughtfully, and with an attitude of worship.  Seek Him in His Word, and there is a foolproof guarantee that you WILL find Him, and He WILL speak to you.

peace, but at what cost?

I read many books at once.  It’s how my brain works.  One of my current reads is The Letters & Lessons of Theodore Roosevelt for His Sons .  It is a compilation of wonderful and very personal letters from President Teddy to each of his sons.  I may disagree with him on some issues as president, but I am in complete agreement with his style of parenting.  One quote from the book is a beautiful piece of wisdom that we all could live by:

“Love of peace is common among weak, short-sighted, timid, and lazy persons; and on the other hand courage is found among many men of evil temper and bad character.  Neither quality shall by itself avail.  Justice among the nations of mankind, and the uplifting of humanity, can be brought about only by those strong and daring men who with wisdom love peace, but who love righteousness more than peace.”

He certainly cuts to the quick with his words.  We live in a world where many voices scream out the mantra, “Can’t we all just get along?”  The answer varies depending on your worldview, but Scripture is clear that the answer is a resounding, “No!”  We are born children of wrath, so “peace” is not possible until the “righteousness” that Teddy speaks of reigns in our hearts.  The interesting thing is that God is called the “God of peace” many times in the Bible, but He is only the God of peace after we have been given His righteousness.  Seek God and His righteousness…and find peace.  Thanks for the reminder, Teddy.

oh, to be pleasant

I love old movies. Old music. Old television shows. Old books. You get the idea. I don’t know why exactly, but maybe it has to do with the fact that those things from the bygone years represent a time that was far from perfect, but was far more simplistic, in many regards. As far as old movies go, I have seen hundreds of them, but the films of Jimmy Stewart (most of them) stand out as some personal favorites. He was a fascinating actor, and even more so, a fascinating person.

Years ago, I remember when he would read his poems on the Johnny Carson Show, and how one minute he would have Johnny and Ed in stitches, and the next minute both hosts and the rest of the audience would have eyes filled with tears. He was like that. With that unique voice of his, and those gentle facial mannerisms, he could effortlessly run the full gamut of human emotion, and bring his audience along for the adventure. His 1950 film entitled Harvey is one of his best, and one I enjoy often. I love the screwball atmosphere throughout, and the pell-mell reactions of the charcters as the story unfolds, but most of all I love to get caught up in the philosophizing of Jimmy Stewart’s character, Edward P. Doud. He certainly beats to a different drum throughout, especially in regards to how he treats others. No matter what level of chaotic action is taking place around him, he nevertheless remains gentle, kind, loving, considerate, and pleasant. One such phrase of philosophy sticks with me often. It goes like this, “In this world you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant. Well, for years I was smart; I recommend pleasant. And you may quote me“. Isn’t that the fruit of the Spirit in action? Of course, knowledge is a great thing, yet not an end in itself. We should seek knowledge, i.e. being smart, in order to then live it out in the form of fruit, i.e. being pleasant. When the Scriptures teach us about “Christlikeness”, the focus is on the fruit or character traits that reflect the likeness of Christ – not simply “smarts”. That is how we should live, and that should be our focus – not mere knowledge of God, but rather living a life that clearly reflects God in and through us. That is what the world needs to see – and you may quote me.

“Pleasant words are a honeycomb, Sweet to the soul and healing to the bones.”

Proverbs 16:24