Me: Solitude it a good thing, it can help you be with God.
This is from the book Lead Like Jesus by Ken Blanchard, Phil Hodges and Phyllis Hendry
Solitude is truly countercultural and therefore a challenging behavior to adopt. Furthermore, solitude draws us into the very place so many of our activities seem designed to help us escape: being truly alone with God and without an agenda. It is a rare and often unsettling feeling to stop doing and just be. Yet as strange as it feels to actively seek opportunities to “cease striving” (Psalm 46:10 NASB), the result of doing so consistently can be life changing. We can find clarity in the silence.
Romans 8:31
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
Me: Don’t put all your trust in the fence. We need the Lord also.
This is from the book It’s Not Supposed to be This Way by Lysa Terkeurst
The Moabites were lulled into a false sense of security. Without challenges and changes people tend to grow increasingly distant from God and resistant to His ways.
The Moabites lived in a place geographically where they escaped the invasion of the Syrians and Babylonians who came in to destroy Israel. The Moabites were untouched. Because they were untouched, they could settle into complacency while their neighbors, the Israelites, were forced to depend on God and to learn to survive suffering, captivity, enslavement. The Israelites appear to be the ones not being “saved” from hardship by God. But if we look through the lens of what’s best in the long term, Israel was being strengthened by God for its eventual good.
Settling into complacency might seem to be comfortable for today, but in the long run we, like the Moabites, may suffer more if we go untouched by God for too long.
Make no mistake: being lulled into a false sense of security is worse than going through the process of suffering.
Is anyone among you suffering? Then he must pray. Is anyone cheerful? He is to sing praises. James 5:13 (NASB)
I do not know when I have had happier times in my soul, than when I have been sitting at work, with nothing before me but a candle and a white cloth, and hearing no sound but that of my own breath, with God in my soul and heaven in my eye….I rejoice in being exactly what I am,–a creature capable of loving God, and who, as long as God lives, must be happy. I get up and look for a while out of the window, and gaze at the moon and stars, the work of an Almighty hand. I think of the grandeur of the universe, and then sit down, and think myself one of the happiest beings in it.
—-A poor Methodist Woman, 18th Century.
John 14:23
Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.
Pastoring a rural church in 1950’s and 60’s meant earning most of your living doing something else. For fifteen years, I drove a school bus, and so did my wife, Wilma. We lived near Three Rivers in southwestern Michigan, named for the rivers that meet in the center of town-the Rocky, the Portage and the St. Joseph.
My church for twenty years was the Moore Park Mennonite Church, about five miles from Three Rivers. Looking back at those years, I see that our life was filled with children–our own three boys and the children of Moore Park and Three Rivers.
Early every weekday morning we picked them up and drove them to the community school, and in the afternoon we loaded them up again and took them home. We knew everyone. If teachers wondered where a child lived, they asked Wilma and me.
I have so many memories of those kids, but there’s one I remember especially. His name was Billy Misel. I first saw him in 1962, when he boarded my bus on the day he started Kindergarten. He was a quiet child, and tall for his age even then. I saw him most school days into sixth grade, and each summer when he enrolled in the Bible school at my church.
One day in 1968, Billy’s sixth-grade teacher gave the class a writing assignment. Billy decided to write about his dream from the night before: An angel had come to him and had taken him to heaven. Billy saw mansions and streets of gold, angels and the throne of God. Heaven seemed to be a wonderful place. The angel told Billy he could live there, but he would have to go back to earth for seven days. After that time, the angel would come for him, and he could live in heaven with God and His angels forever.
Billy had always been a serious boy, and the dream affected him deeply. The image of heaven was beautiful, and he liked thinking about it. He described his dream on paper and then read the story to his classmates. Seven days later he was riding with his brother in a pickup truck. There was an accident, and Billy was killed.
A call came from Misel family after Billy’s death, and I went to their home to make preparations for the funeral. I expected to pray with them and to express my own grief. How can anyone be prepared when the life of someone so young is ended so abruptly? But I did not yet know of Billy’s school assignment. His mother asked me to sit down, and she gave me the paper to read–Billy’s story of his dream, the story of his angel, written in his own hand.
At Billy’s funeral, I read his story out loud to a large assemblage of friends, who were profoundly moved by his words. I have described the experience countless times in the years since. It is possible, of course, that the magnificent place he saw was the product of a young’s boy imagination, enriched by the Bible stories he heard every summer at my church. It is possible that the angel was just a dream. But I believe Billy was visited by a messenger from heaven so he would not be afraid of what lay ahead, and he shared his vision with us here on earth.
Seven days tell me so.
Psalms 51:10
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Prodigal: Yes, I agree. You have to be courageous.
Me: That is very true.
This comes from the book Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders
Courageous leaders face unpleasant and even devastating situations with equanimity, then act firmly to bring good from trouble, even if their action is unpopular. Leadership always faces natural human inertia and opposition. But courage follows through with a task until it is done.
People expect leaders to be calm and courageous during a crisis. While others lose their heads, leaders stay the course. Leaders strengthen followers in the middle of discouraging setbacks and shattering reverses.
Facing the ruthless armies of Sennacherib, Hezekiah made his military preparations and then set about strengthening the morale of his people. “Be strong and courageous, ” he told them. “Do not be afraid or discouraged because of the king of Assyria and the vast army with him…..With him is only the arm of flesh, but with us, is the Lord our God to help us and to fight our battles.” And then the Scriptures report that “the people gained confidence from what Hezekiah the king of Judah said” (2 Chronicles 32:7-8) .
James 5:1-3
Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth eaten. Your gold and silver is rusted; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have laid up your treasure together for the last days.
Me: Yes, there is something about the cross that reminds you of love.
Prodigal: The greatest of all love.
This is from the book Imaginations: More Than You Think by James P. Gills
As I studied the newspaper more and the Bible less, I became weaker in the Word. When we are weak in the Word, our thoughts are open to the assaults of the world–the temptations and lures of sin. And because our thoughts run our life, unless we constantly guard them, we become vulnerable to the powers of sin. Sin robs us of the blessing of God, leading us to poverty of spirit, soul, and body.
Psalm 1:2
But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on his law he meditates day and night.
Prodigal: Give me ten more minutes and I will be right there when I finish this up.
Me: Speaking of time, that is what I am going to talk about.
This is from the book Seven Seasons of the Man in the Mirror by Patrick Morley
In June 1994, my best friend for eighteen years Tom Skinner, died suddenly of acute leukemia. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of him.
After his death, those friends who knew we were close would express some form of condolence. What is particularly interesting to me is that the average length of those condolences was about ten seconds. Then the subject would change, and in most cases, that’s the last time his name was ever mentioned.
Tom was a man who always had people trying to get a piece of his time. I’m talking about hundreds of people. Let’s be honest. Most people who ask you for time don’t really care that much about you personally. I’m not blaming them. I’m simply pointing out that for most people in your life, you are good for about ten seconds of respect, and then life must go on. Only a handful of people will even attend your funeral, much less shed a tear.
Why? Because we’re on the run. When someone wants to set you to running, ask yourself, “Is this person really going to miss me when I’m gone?”
2 Corinthians 7:10
For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.
