My Blog

Finding God (in the Trash)

A few years ago I wrote and published a book titled "Finding God Where You Least Expect Him." It’s all about learning to think in such a way as to be constantly discovering God in our lives and in the world around us. Well I recently received an email from a mother/daughter janitorial team that found God in the least likely place — in the trashcan! I must say, that is one place I wouldn’t have thought of looking. Turns out one of their janitorial clients is the local newspaper office where finding books in the trash is a common occurrence due to the large number of promotional books publishers send to the newspaper for potential reviews. And here’s the fun and ironic part — what they found was my book! That’s right, they found my book about finding God where you least expect Him, in the trash. I wasn’t sure how to take this until I read on. "Well, what a blessing to find your book in the trash," they wrote. "Can you believe that? Well we are happy because its one of the most inspiring books we have read." It’s one of my finest endorsements — a compliment, not only to the message of the book, but to the gospel as well. The gospel seems to always deal in treasure and trash. Here they were finding something valuable among things normally discarded. The parallel between this and how God finds us should not be wasted. I think you could safely say that God is always pulling us out of the trash. And in finding us there, He also finds a part of Himself, since we are all in His image. This is one of the reasons He looks for us. He is completing the picture He started at creation. He is bringing us together as a display of His grace in the universe. And He rummages through the trash to do it, turning rubbish into something that will bring Him great glory. This story is not only about God finding us; it’s also about us finding each other, too. These women found me and in turn I found them. And it all happened in a trashcan. Amazing what God can do! Don’t sell God short. He can show up anywhere and use anything, so be ready.

"Face Reality"

"Don’t escape from the difficulty but overcome it with courage. If you escape from the difficulty once, you will continue to escape from it forever."

IF SOMEONE HAD A GUN HELD IN FRONT OF YOUR FACE AND ASKED YOU IF YOU BELIEVED IN GOD, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
SAY NO AND FEEL ASHAMED THE REST OF YOUR LIFE? OR SAY YES, I DO, AND DIE STANDING UP FOR GOD?

If you would say no, DELETE THIS E-MAIL , NOW. IF YOU WOULD SAY YES,
AND STAND UP FOR JESUS CHRIST, PLEASE READ THIS AND PASS ON.

Note: This is a true article that was printed in a southern newspaper less then a year ago

TAKE A DEEP BREATH BEFORE READING THIS

There was an atheist couple who had a child. The couple never told their daughter anything about the Lord. One night when the little girl was 5 years old, the parents fought with each other and the dad shot the Mom, right in front of the child. Then, the dad shot himself. The little girl watched it all. She then was sent to a foster home. The foster mother was a Christian and took the child to church. On the first day of Sunday School, the foster mother told the teacher that the girl had never heard of Jesus, and to have patience with her. The teacher held up a picture of Jesus and said, "Does anyone know who this is?" The little girl said, "I do, that’s the man who was holding me the night my parents died."

If you believe this little girl is telling the truth that even though she had never heard of Jesus, he still held her the night her parents died, then you will forward this to as many people as you can.

Or you can delete it as if it never touched your heart.

Funny, isn’t it?

Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.

Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.

Funny how everyone wants to go to heaven provided they do not have to believe, think, say, or do anything the Bible says. (Or is it scary?)

Funny how someone can say "I believe in God" but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also "believes" in God).

Funny how you can send a thousand ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.

Funny how the lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene pass freely through cyberspace, but the public discussion of Jesus is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Funny how when you go to forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it to them.

Funny how we can go to church for Christ on Sunday, but be an invisible Christian the rest of the week. (Are you laughing?)

Funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me. (Are you thinking?)

Pass this on only if you mean it.

YES, I DO LOVE GOD!

“May I Help You?”

Don’t you find it appalling when people who make a living in service-oriented jobs act as if you are presuming upon them by expecting to receive the services they were hired to render? You walk up to a clerk at a fast food restaurant and she looks at you with that “Come-on-buddy-you’re-keeping-me-waiting-here” look. Or you go up to a floorwalker in one of those huge discount stores and he looks at you as if to say, “If you think I’m here to help you, you’ve got another thing coming.” Or how about the car repair man who goes, “You want it when?” and laughs at you? When we moved into a house in New England, we immediately had septic tank problems due to the inactivity of the water system. I called a plumber and he checked it out but couldn’t determine the problem. When I asked him what I should do, he scratched his head and said, “Hard to say.” I asked him if the problem might take care of itself in time, he said, “Hard to say.” And when I asked if there might be someone else who would know what to do, he scratched his head and said (you guessed it), “Hard to say.” My dad, who was helping me move in at the time, started calling him the hard-to-say guy. All the while I’m thinking, aren’t you supposed to be the person who knows about these things? Aren’t I paying you to solve my problem? Having said this, I have to say I love my druggist, Alana. She is the most “can-do” person I know. She is always in cheery spirits and when she says, “May I help you?” that means she is ready to put all her resources to work for you at that moment. And if it involves a problem to solve, that’s even better. “No problem,” is one of her favorite statements. And she says it with such confidence! I wish you could see her face. I’m picturing it right now and she has a little smirk that says, “Relax, John. I’ve got it covered.” Would that we all could have such an attitude towards each other. The Bible tells us we are more than husbands and wives and sons and daughters and neighbors and friends, we are servants, and as such, we should have a continual “May I help you?” attitude towards each other. And when we face an obstacle in serving someone, we either get an answer or find someone who can. Maybe you have an Alana in your life. Think about that person and what you can learn from her or him. We need to get used to thinking of ourselves as servants, because that is what Jesus called us to be.

More Than Friendly

In her book, Material Christianity: Religion and Popular Culture in America, Temple University professor Dr. Colleen McDannell has discovered a certain kind of Christian in America who seeks to only interact with those who share their Christian beliefs and cultural lifestyle. From her study as a sociologist, she makes a number of very acute observations about this American Christian, the most telling being: “With their non-Christian neighbors they are friendly but rarely best friends.” I am well acquainted with this kind of thinking. I grew up with it. I was encouraged to be on friendly terms with non-Christians but to have only Christian friends. I’m pretty sure this was more for our protection than anything. Meanwhile, while we were learning to be good Christians, who was left to tell the others about Jesus? Unfortunately that’s how we developed gospel tracks and door-to-door evangelism. Hit and run witnessing, I call it. Get in; get out; stay clean. I have no doubt that Christ would want us to be more than just friendly to those who are not of the household of faith. He would want us to be friends. That’s the way He did it when He was here. In fact his friends were quite scandalous among the religious leaders of the day. Word was, Jesus was “a friend of the worst sort of sinners” (Luke 7:34). Being friendly is just not going to get anybody into the kingdom of heaven. Being a friend will. It takes love, patience, and longsuffering with even the most cantankerous of unbelievers for walls of resistance to break down. And it takes time. But that’s what a true friendship is — caring for someone over the long haul, and letting someone care for you, too. Friendship is always a two-way street. It’s been statistically shown that people who become Christians typically lose all regular contact with their non-Christian friends within two years. What’s wrong with this picture? For brand new believers, it may be necessary for a season to stay away from former influences, but this is never to be a permanent situation. Let’s think about our neighbors today, and our work related associates, and think about how we can be more than just friendly. Think of it this way: we are the carriers of Christ. If we remain distant, we are depriving others of the opportunity to come into contact with Him. After all, Christ in you is the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27) — hope for me, hope for you, and hope for our friends. This is why being friendly just isn’t good enough.

Time Zones and Faith by John Fischer

Our thought for today comes from a woman who has had more difficulties to deal with than a lot of us put together. That is why she has a right to say what she says, and why we should take notice when she says it.

“I know discouragement comes easy, but I also know things happen when God is ready for them to happen and not a second sooner. God knows why he wants things to happen in the order they have to. We just need to be ready when they come.”

This is a woman in a complex situation seeking to hold onto a childlike faith while displaying an adult-like wisdom. What she’s saying is that she has recognized there are two different time zones going on when it comes to correlating God’s will and our experience. One I’ll call My Desperate Time (MDT) and the other, God’s Own Time (GOT).

Most of us run on MDT. MDT defines our reality. It’s what we see and feel always. We are conscious of it the minute we rise up in the morning until we put our weary heads on the pillow at night. We measure pleasure and pain by it; we judge our overall state-of-being by it.

God, on the other hand, exists in another time zone entirely. In GOT, His will is always done, and nothing is ever late. GOT also takes into account the MDT of everyone, which can often get tangled up. You see there are as many MDT zones as there are people, and that means they can often be in conflict. But with God there is never any conflict. There is only one GOT and as far as He is concerned, everything is right on schedule.

This is why it is utterly silly to wonder if God has heard our prayers based on whether or not He has acted in MDT. God always hears our prayers — He has most likely already answered them — he just answered them in GOT.

Most of our issues with God are all about time zones. Think about the hapless Bible character, Job. Job was smack in the middle of MDT all the while he was suffering, and his best friends were trying to figure out why God wasn’t doing anything in MDT. Well, we know now that God rarely does; He is always in GOT and we can see that now, in Job’s case, because his life ultimately caught up with GOT. Eventually, all MDT will be GOT. In fact, that will be what heaven is all about. We will all be kicking back in God’s Own Time.

So faith is mostly all about time zones. When you pray, know that you were heard, and move ahead, believing in GOT and just maybe, MDT won’t be so desperate.

God’s Economy
by John Fischer

God’s economy is all about turning our hardship into help for someone else. There is a purpose in pain. It’s never pleasant at the time, but it bears fruit for others. The process is quite simple really. I go through something that necessitates my receiving resources from God to get through it. And while God is strengthening me, the strength that He gives me is something I can share with someone else, especially someone going through a similar difficulty.

Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 1:3-5…

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the Lord of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God. For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.

There you have it. Overflowing comfort. When we’re going through a hard time, God gives us more than enough to cope, so we’ll have something leftover to share with someone else, thus giving us a purpose even in our hardship. This is so important because one of the tendencies when things go bad is to think that our life is suddenly pointless and wasted. We find it hard to wrestle anything good out of the bad things that happen to us. But the good is always there, and if we can’t see it, it’s because we aren’t tuned into God’s economy. We are just looking at the situation from one point of view, and it happens to be the most depressing one.

Did you notice, also, that our sufferings and comfort both come from the same source? We share in the sufferings of Christ so that we can share in the comfort that comes from Christ as well. That’s God’s economy.

So are you going through it right now? Are you asking God, "Why?" and not getting any answers? Well, at its most basic level, the unique set of circumstances that set you up for this are such that they will qualify you to help someone else in a similar situation. So if that someone should say to you, "You can’t possibly know what I’m going through," you will be able to say, "Oh yeah? Let me tell you my story and show you how God met me." It keeps circling around like that. That’s part of God’s economy.

God’s Economy

One of the prerequisites for being a servant of God is to think like a servant. This would be fine if it wasn’t so impossible. We are all naturally wired to think only of ourselves. Learning to give preference to others is one of the true marks of a Christian because it is so contrary to human nature. That’s why desiring it comes from God, and doing it comes through the Holy Spirit. Paul said of Timothy: "I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares for your welfare. All the others care only for themselves and not for what matters to Jesus Christ" (Philippians 2:20-21 NLT). Hidden in these verses is the secret to making an attitude of servanthood become a part of your thinking. It starts with Jesus. When you fall in love with Jesus, you focus on Him and worship Him. As you do this, you find out about Him — you get to know Him as you would a friend — and soon you come to know what matters to Him, until finally, you start to realize that what matters to Him, matters to you. This is not just a factor of familiarity, either. There is a supernatural element at work here as well. What matters to Jesus connects with the Holy Spirit in you, and the Spirit answers from deep inside you to the call of truth. Other people mattered deeply to Jesus. He could read their hurt and pain. Scripture says He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Well where did that grief and sorrow come from if it didn’t come from the suffering of people around Him? In other words, He was bearing their grief and carrying their sorrow. Once a woman touched him in a desperate need to be healed, and He could feel the compassionate power go from Him even though He didn’t see who touched Him in the press of the crowd. He was that sensitive to the needs of those around Him. So if you’re struggling with having a servant’s heart, get closer to Jesus. Ask Him to help you see people through His eyes. Ask God to move your heart with the same things that move the heart of Jesus, and then be ready to act on what you find out. And don’t forget to keep falling in love with the life of Christ as recorded in the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), because that is how you come to learn what moved Him.

Let me tell you, make sure you read all the way to the bottom. I almost deleted this email but I was blessed when I got to the end.

Subject: READ ONLY IF YOU HAVE TIME FOR God

God, when I received this e-mail, I thought…

I don’t have time for this… And, this is really inappropriate during work.

Then, I realized that this kind of thinking is… Exactly, what has caused lot of the problems in our world today.

We try to keep God in church on Sunday morning…

Maybe, Sunday night…

And, the unlikely event of a midweek service.

We do like to have Him around during sickness…

And, of course, at funerals.

However, we don’t have time, or room, for Him during work or play…

Because… That’s the part of our lives we think… We can, and should, handle on our own.

May God forgive me for ever thinking…

That… there is a time or place where

HE is not to be FIRST in my life.

We should always have time to remember all HE has done for us.

If, you aren’t ashamed to do this…

Please follow the directions.

Jesus said, "If you are ashamed of me, I will be ashamed of you before my Father."

Not ashamed?

Pass this on ONLY IF YOU MEAN IT!!

Yes, I do Love God.

HE is my source of existence and Savior.

He keeps me functioning each and every day. Without Him, I will be nothing.  But, with Christ, HE strengthens me. (Phil 4:13)

This is the simplest test.

If You Love God… And, are not ashamed of all the marvelous things HE has done for you… Spread this…

I don’t think I know many people who would admit they love Jesus. Do you love Him?

THE POEM

I knelt to pray but not for long, I had too much to do.  I had to hurry and get to work for bills would soon be due. So I knelt and said a hurried prayer,

and jumped up off my knees.

My Christian duty was now done

my soul could rest at ease.

All day long I had no time

To spread a word of cheer. No time to speak of Christ to friends,

they’d laugh at me I’d fear.

No time, no time, too much to do,

That was my constant cry,

No time to give to souls in need

But at last the time, the time to die.

I went before the Lord, I came, and I stood with downcast eyes. For in his hands God held a book; It was the book of life.

God looked into his book and said

"Your name I cannot find.

I once was going to write it down…

But never found the time"

Now do you have the time to pass it on?

Make sure that you scroll through to the end.

Easy vs. Hard

Why is it so hard to tell the truth but yet so easy to tell a lie?

Why we are so sleepy in church but Right when the sermon is over we suddenly wake up?

Why is it so hard to talk about God but yet so easy to talk about nasty stuff?

Why is it so boring to look at a Christian magazine, but yet so easy to look at a nasty one?

Why is it so easy to delete a Godly e-mail, but yet we forward all of the nasty ones?

Why are the churches getting smaller but yet the bars and dance clubs are getting larger?

Do you give up? Think about it are you going to forward this, or delete it?

Just remember-God is watching you. Prayer Wheel-Let’s see the devil stop this one!

Here’s what the wheel is all about. When you receive this, say a prayer for the person that sent it to you….

That’s all you have to do….

There is nothing attached….

This is so powerful….

Do not stop the wheel, please….

Of all the free gifts we may receive, Prayer is the very best one….

There are no costs, but wonderful rewards… GOD BLESS!

May God keep you and bless you. If this doesn’t give you chills, nothing will…this message is very true. Hope you are all as blessed as I was from this story. I wonder how many people will delete this without reading it because of the title on it?

There once was a man named George Thomas, pastor in a small

New England

 town. One Easter Sunday morning he came to the Church carrying a rusty, bent, old bird cage, and set it by the pulpit. Eyebrows were raised and, as if in response, Pastor Thomas began to speak…

"I was walking through town yesterday when I saw a young boy coming toward me swinging this bird cage. On the bottom of the cage were three little wild birds, shivering with cold and fright. I stopped the lad and asked, "What you got there, son?"

"Just some old birds," came the reply.

                        "What are you going to do with them?" I asked.

"Take ‘em home and have fun with ‘em," he answered. "I’m going to tease ‘em and pull out their feathers to make ‘em fight. I’m going to have a real good time."

"But you’ll get tired of those birds sooner or later. What will you do?"

"Oh, I got some cats," said the little boy. "They like birds. I’ll take ‘em to them."

The pastor was silent for a moment. "How much do you want for those birds, son?"

"Huh?? !!! Why, do you want the birds, mister? They’re just plain old field birds. They don’t sing. They ain’t even pretty!"

                               "How much?" the pastor asked again.

The boy sized up the pastor as if he were crazy and said, "$10?"

The pastor reached in his pocket and took out a ten dollar bill. He placed it in the boy’s hand. In a flash, the boy was gone.

The pastor picked up the cage and gently carried it to the end of the alley where there was a tree and a grassy spot setting the cage down, he opened the door, and by softly tapping the bars persuaded the birds out, setting them free.

Well, that explained the empty bird cage on the pulpit, and then the pastor began to tell this story.

One day Satan and Jesus were having a conversation. Satan had just come from the Garden of Eden, and he was gloating and boasting. "Yes, sir, I just caught the world full of people down there. Set them a trap, used bait I knew they couldn’t resist. Got ‘em all!"

"What are you going to do with them?" Jesus asked.

Satan replied, "Oh, I’m going to have fun! I’m going to teach them how to marry and divorce each other, how to hate and abuse each other, how to drink and smoke and curse. I’m going to teach them how to invent guns and bombs and kill each other. I’m really going to have fun!"

"And what will you do when you get done with them?" Jesus asked. "Oh, I’ll kill ‘em," Satan glared proudly.

            

"How much do you want for them?" Jesus asked. "Oh, you don’t want those people. They ain’t no good. Why, you’ll take them and they’ll just hate you. They’ll spit on you, curse you and kill you. You don’t want those people!!" "How much?" He asked again. Satan looked at Jesus and sneered, "All your blood, tears and your life." Jesus said, "DONE!" Then He paid the price. The pastor picked up the cage he opened the door and he walked from the pulpit. Notes: Isn’t it funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell. Isn’t it funny how someone can say "I believe in God" but still follow Satan (who, by the way, also "believes" in God). Isn’t it funny how you can send a thousand jokes through e-mail and they spread like wildfire, but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing? Isn’t it funny how when you go to forward this message, you will not send it to many on your address list because you’re not sure what they believe, or what they will think of you for sending it to them. Isn’t it funny how I can be more worried about what other people think of me than what God thinks of me? I pray, for everyone who sends this to their entire address book, they will be blessed by God in a way special for them. And send it back to the person who sent it, to let them know that indeed it was sent out to many more.

Thinking About Jesus

One of the prerequisites for being a servant of God is to think like a servant. This would be fine if it wasn’t so impossible. We are all naturally wired to think only of ourselves.

Learning to give preference to others is one of the true marks of a Christian because it is so contrary to human nature. That’s why desiring it comes from God, and doing it comes through the Holy Spirit.

Paul said of Timothy: “I have no one else like Timothy, who genuinely cares for your welfare. All the others care only for themselves and not for what matters to Jesus Christ” (Philippians 2:20-21 NLT).

Hidden in these verses is the secret to making an attitude of servanthood become a part of your thinking. It starts with Jesus. When you fall in love with Jesus, you focus on Him and worship Him. As you do this, you find out about Him — you get to know Him as you would a friend — and soon you come to know what matters to Him, until finally, you start to realize that what matters to Him, matters to you. This is not just a factor of familiarity, either. There is a supernatural element at work here as well. What matters to Jesus connects with the Holy Spirit in you, and the Spirit answers from deep inside you to the call of truth.

Other people mattered deeply to Jesus. He could read their hurt and pain. Scripture says He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. Well where did that grief and sorrow come from if it didn’t come from the suffering of people around Him? In other words, He was bearing their grief and carrying their sorrow. Once a woman touched him in a desperate need to be healed, and He could feel the compassionate power go from Him even though He didn’t see who touched Him in the press of the crowd. He was that sensitive to the needs of those around Him.

So if you’re struggling with having a servant’s heart, get closer to Jesus. Ask Him to help you see people through His eyes. Ask God to move your heart with the same things that move the heart of Jesus, and then be ready to act on what you find out. And don’t forget to keep falling in love with the life of Christ as recorded in the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), because that is how you come to learn what moved Him.

Check Your Lane

"When everything is coming your way, you’re in the wrong lane." I got this from one of those joke pages flying around the Internet. Actually, having everything coming at you may not necessarily mean you’re in the wrong lane when it comes to personal growth. I would go as far as to suggest that everything going your way is probably a condition to be less trusted than feeling like you’re driving into oncoming traffic. I just don’t see God as doling out ease and contentment. His business lies more in the areas of refining and shaping us to conform more to the image of Christ, and none of that comes easy. Scripture indicates that the process by which this comes about includes, among other things, trials (James 1:2-3), suffering (Romans 5:3-4), discipline (Hebrews 12:7), and a growing sense of our own mortality (2 Corinthians 5:4-5). In one illustration, Paul uses the metaphor of an earthen vessel to explain our human condition and how God uses us (2 Corinthians 4:7). To think about an earthen vessel (a piece of pottery) is to get an accurate picture of what we can expect in this life. A pot begins as a lump of clay that is kneaded and slammed until all the air is out of it and the lump is the right consistency to form into something useful. Then it is placed on a potter’s wheel where the potter molds and shapes it, spinning it in his wet hands, until its sides are stretched out and up into a shape that can hold something. Then it is set on a shelf and allowed to dry before the real fun part begins — the firing — after which it is glazed and fired again. (I hope you are imagining yourself going through all of this because that’s the idea.) Finally it is ready to be used, and that usually includes some pretty rough treatment — a seemingly endless pattern of getting dirty and being cleaned only to get dirty again. Over time it ages and cracks with use, but according to Paul’s illustration, this only lets out more of what it contains, which is described as the light of Christ (2 Corinthians 4:6) — for we are indeed this vessel. It is a process that gradually de-emphasizes us and more and more emphasizes what we contain. Which is to say that when everything seems to be coming your way (trials, hardship, testing times) you are probably in the right lane after all. It’s the society we live in that thinks it deserves to have everything go its way. God never guaranteed anything of the kind, at least in this life.