What did you do this Sunday afternoon?

My wife's childhood friend and her husband spent this Sunday afternoon lying in a hospital bed with their 16-year old daughter and telling her good-bye. Not for them to leave her to go home, but for her to leave her body and enter into eternity. She was mortally injured in an ATV accident. Her younger cousin was slightly injured. A fun-filled afternoon of riding all terrain vehicles for two cousins ended tragically. A family is making plans to bury a child, a sister, a grandchild, a niece, a cousin, and a friend. A family is holding onto photographs, memories, and perhaps a favorite item while trying to hold each other together without this young member. Thoughts of what was and could have been are running rampant. Things once deemed very important no longer even matter.

So, what did you do this Sunday afternoon? Did you spend it griping and complaining about something that did or didn't happen at church this morning? Was there a time of talking about someone else to someone else? Was a televised race, golf tournament, or ball game more important than anything the children wanted this afternoon? Did you spend time with work you brought home from the office...again...instead of with the wife or husband? Did you give any thought to what you have rather than thinking about what you don't have? Did you do like me and just enjoy a lazy afternoon not giving any thought to anything?

The human species is a strange being. We have this great capacity for learning from experience and yet, this great capacity for becoming complacent and ignorant to those experiences. On December 23, 2004, my youngest daughter was dying in a pediatrician's office and carried to a hospital emergency room by ambulance. A life flight team from the local children's hospital came in, took over, and rushed her to the ICU at the children's hospital. I remember praying for God to let me trade places. I remember her whole life going through my head. I remember going home and telling her three older sisters that they needed to pray because their youngest sister was at death's door. I remember hugging those three sisters as one and realizing that nothing was more important on this earth than them. I cannot tell you everything that went through my mind in that short afternoon. Thankfully, God let us keep our youngest. She was diagnosed as a Type 1 diabetic after the pediatrician had made a major misdiagnosis. She is very much alive and active. But, seven years down the road and I find myself sometimes forgetting what is important and what really matters.

Life is short and when it ends at sixteen, it never really got started. We are not guaranteed tomorrow. We are not even guaranteed the rest of the day. Our time on the earth is micro-miniscule compared to the time our bodies spend in the earth. I believe in the afterlife. I believe in a heaven where God reigns. I believe the only way to that heaven is through his son, Jesus Christ by grace alone through faith alone. I believe there is no way for me to enter the presence of God except by acceptance of the free gift of salvation by his Son. You may or may not believe as I do. However, if you are a friend, you matter to me and because you matter to me, I want you to know why I believe as I do and share it with you. If I ask to talk to you about Jesus, it is not because I'm some fanatical bubble headed intellectual simpleton, it is because life is short and you matter to me.

How Do You Know You Are Out Of Milk?

My wife and I were in bed and asleep when a knock on our bedroom door awakened us shortly past midnight.

Before I continue this very informative and groundbreaking discussion, allow me to provide a little background. My youngest daughter (age 12), Skylar, is a Type 1 diabetic. Her blood sugar level can plunge too low just as easily as it can spike too high when she is not careful with her insulin management. When her sugar level is at the bottom level of normal and dropping while she will be sleeping for the night, she needs to eat something that will be long-lasting in her system such as a protein or a dairy product. Now, back to the topic at hand.

As the both of us answered, “Yes?” to the infiltrating disturber of our slumber, Skylar informs us that, “My sugar is 83, dropping, and we are out of milk.” My wife answers, “How can we be out of milk? I just bought some.” Not necessarily the best response to a young master of sarcastic hilarity.

From the mouth of that 12-year old bundle of wisdom came the answer to today’s question, “Okay. Here’s how it works. If the gallon jug is empty and in the trash, you are out of milk.” Needless to say we went back to sleep chuckling after it trickled down from laughter. Oh, we did suggest an alternative to her.

Congress Defined

Congress: A group of 535 men and women, each hoping to one day have the talent and brain power to be elevated to moron.

A Terryism....

If the answer is more federal government, I want to withdraw the question.

A Terryism....

Our government is designed for the revolt of the people. Yes, it is. We can have a revolution every two to four years; it's called an election.

Your Guide?

When we were children, it seemed that there was a rule for everything we did:

• “Don’t chew food with your mouth open.”
• “You have to share that with your sister/brother/friend/person.”
• “Cover your mouth when you cough.”
• “Don’t talk to me with that tone of voice.”
• “Go wash your hands.” And, my favorite,
• “If you keep making that face, it will freeze like that.”

As we grew older, we looked forward to the day when we didn't have to follow rules. Boy, did we get stung on that one. Every aspect of life has rules or guidelines. Boy Scouts have a handbook on how to be a Boy Scout. Traffic laws tell us how to drive. There are rules of conduct in your work place. We are in constant touch with guidelines that deal with how to live various aspects of our lives. To what extent these rules affect us depends entirely on how we view them.

The way you see things, the way you think things through, and the actions you take on a set of circumstances is all predicated on who you are. Every influence on your life, be it from your parents, teachers, experience, books and formal education, or from any and everything circumstance, determine what makes you who you are. This, in turn, determines how you view the things around you which causes you to act the way you do. However, there are two other parts of you that greatly influence your vision of life, the world, those around you, and how you respond to it all. The Bible calls them the natural man and the spiritual man.

Because of Adam and Eve, we are all born with a sin nature (Romans 3:23, 5:12). We have the capacity to sin without having been taught to sin. It comes natural to us. In our purest and most natural state, we will have a view of circumstances and situations in such a way that the actions we take upon them will be pleasing to us, whether they are right or not. Our responses to circumstances and the decisions we make for those circumstances will be those of a sinner. The primary guiding factor in our life will be us and what we have become. Your acceptance or rejection of Christ was most likely influenced by those that have been around you throughout your life. If you have accepted Christ as savior and claim to follow Him, what influences your thought processes and decision making abilities now?

The answer to the previous question is, quite simply, Jesus Christ, the Word of God. Yes, I called Jesus Christ, the Word of God. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we have seen His glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father full of grace and truth.” - John 1:1,14.¹ The two verses very clearly state that Jesus is not only the Son of God, but that he is God and he is the living son of God. Psalms 33:6 tells us , “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and by the breath of his mouth all their host.” You and I were made by the Word of God. Jesus Christ is the Creator, the Son of God, and the Word of God.

Now that we have established that Christ is the Word of God Incarnate (made flesh; in human form), let's see how that pertains to the written Word of God. The first part of 2 Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is breathed out by God.” 2 Peter 1:21 continues with “For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Whoa. Every written word of God was written by God. Not physically, but though believing men who were yielded to the Holy Spirit and who wrote as they were so led. Now, what do you do with these two facts: 1) Christ is the Word of God and 2) the written Word of God was given to us by God through the Holy Spirit?

Let's go back and look at all of 2 Timothy 3:16 and verse 17, “All Scripture is breathed by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work. “ Psalms 119:105 declares, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.”

Deuteronomy 8:3 and Matthew 4:4 reminds us that we do not live by bread alone (or in the flesh alone) but “every word that comes from the mouth of God.” Our focus, our vision, our purpose, our guidelines, and the very essence of us living as a born again child of God is to come from the Bible, the Holy Scriptures, the written Word of God. What we read and learn there dictates how we view circumstances and how we respond to them. The Word of God is the final authority in everything because it is God. This is has to be the foundation of every aspect of living for those who have come to Christ by grace alone through faith alone. Need more? Read Psalms 1.

¹Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (ESV), copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Freedom Thought of the Day.

Free enterprise and capitalism should be faith neutral. It is common sense that free men would want the most free form of government and economy. I never cease to be amazed at how the bleeding heart, liberal Christian will evoke Jesus and his teaching about the poor as justification for socialism. Not only do they not understand the concept of freedom, they are theological neophytes.