Food For Thought Fridays

Last Saturday afternoon, we decided to play a little baseball in the backyard. Caleb and Isaiah were taking turns swinging at pitches until it was too dark to see.

Caleb was up to bat and Amanda tossed a nice underhand pitch right across the plate. Caleb took a huge Babe Ruth cut at the ball and made contact. The ball went up high in the air and Caleb's eyes followed the ball until it landed.

Right BEHIND him.

He turned around and instead of being disappointed, he shouted, "HOME RUN! HOME RUN!"

In the eyes of a lesser baseball enthusiast, his home run would have been called a foul ball.

Romans 8: 35-39 says, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Sometimes we let life, the trouble, the hardship, the persecution, the bills, our health, our job, our family, our kids, . . . basically we allow all of the foul balls in our lives to interfere with our trust and dependence on Jesus.

We have to remember that no foul ball will keep us from shouting that we have the HOME RUN love of Jesus Christ and we are more than conquerors because His love hit a HOME RUN for us.

Keep swinging.

Food For Thought Fridays

WARNING: This may be a bit heavy.

Just thinking about this.

Romans 1:24-25 says, "Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen."

In these verses, whether they like it or not, everybody is worshiping.

We will worship something or someone because you and I are worshipers. It is what we do. We can't help it. We can't stop it.

Every day, there is a battle for our worship.

Money, entertainment, food, alcohol, sports, sex, popularity, the list goes on and on. . .

We call them addictions, but really it is a worship problem. We have chosen to run to these other things to meet our needs and desires rather than the Creator who is blessed forever and ever.

We may not be able to stop worshiping, but we can choose to make our worship count for today and for eternity.

Shalom.

Food for Thought Fridays

I don't know if anybody even reads this, but I am going to TRY to put some thoughts down on Fridays. Not saying I am right, but just some thoughts.

In Romans 1:1 Paul starts his letter by saying, "Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God. . ."

Paul said he was a servant or bondservant depending on the version you read. We use servant most times in the Bible because slave sounds harsh.

But, I wonder if our prayer life reflects a slave's heart.

Many times I feel like I only make my requests known before the Father without taking time to listen to the Master's voice. What kind of slave tells his master exactly what he wants done and how to do it?

I think it would do us well to take some time to get on our face and seek the voice of the Master.

Romans 11: 34-36 says,

For who has known the mind of the Lord,or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen.

We must realize the Creator of the universe owes us nothing. But, every day, every minute, every smile, every laugh and every tear are by God's grace and mercy.

How small are we and how great is our God that He is mindful of us.