(written by Max Lucado from MaxLucado.com)
Resentment. . . a door quietly closes.
Anger… the door slams shut!
Hurts from your heritage.. . fasten the latch!
Weakened faith . . . throw the bolt!
Four elements that can lock up a heart, keeping delight out and darkness in. Resentment, the cocaine of the emotions. Anger, the destroyer of joy. Your heritage, the straitjacket of expectation. Declining faith, the marauder of hope.
And four keys to unlocking the heart… to replacing resentment with forgiveness, anger with understanding… to repairing the past with the possible… to rediscovering faith.
Chapter One- Get Rid of Regret
You have one. A sack. A burlap sack. Probably aren’t aware of it, may not have been told about it. Could be you don’t remember it. But it was given to you. A sack. An itchy, scratchy burlap sack. You needed the sack so you could carry the stones. Rocks, boulders, pebbles. All sizes. All shapes. All unwanted. You didn’t request them. You didn’t seek them. But you were given them. Don’t remember?
Some were rocks of rejection. You were given one the time you didn’t pass the tryout. It wasn’t for lack of effort. Heaven only knows how much you practiced. You thought you were good enough for the team. But the coach didn’t. The instructor didn’t. You thought you were good enough, but they said you weren’t. They and how many others?
You don’t have to live long before you get a collection of stones. Make a poor grade. Make a bad choice. Make a mess. Get called a few names. Get mocked. Get abused.
And the stones don’t stop with adolescence. I sent a letter this week to an unemployed man who’s been rejected in more than fifty interviews.
And so the sack gets heavy. Heavy with stones. Stones of rejection. Stones we don’t deserve. Look into the burlap sack and you see that not all the stones are from rejections. There is a second type of stone. The stone of regret.
Regret for the time you lost your temper.
Regret for the day you lost control.
Regret for the moment you lost your pride.
Regret for the years you lost your priorities.
And even regret for the hour you lost your innocence.
One stone after another, one guilty stone after another.
With time the sack gets heavy. We get tired. How can you have dreams for the future when all your energy is required to shoulder the past?
No wonder some people look miserable. The sack slows the step. The sack chafes. Helps explain the irritation on so many faces, the sag in so many steps, the drag in so many shoulders, and most of all, the desperation in so many acts. You’re consumed with doing whatever it takes to get some rest.
So you take the sack to the office. You resolve to work so hard you’ll forget about the sack. You arrive early and stay late. People are impressed. But when it’s time to go home, there is the sack—waiting to be carried out.
You carry the stones into happy hour. With a name like that, it must bring relief. So you set the sack on the floor, sit on the stool, and drink a few. The music gets loud and your head gets light. But then it’s time to go and you look down and there is the sack.
You drag it into therapy. You sit on the couch with the sack at your feet and spill all your stones on the floor and name them one by one. The therapist listens. She empathizes. Some helpful counsel is given. But when the time is up, you’re obliged to gather the rocks and take them with you.You get so desperate you try a weekend rendezvous. A little excitement. A risky embrace. A night of stolen passion. And for a moment the load is lighter. But then the weekend passes. Sunday’s sun sets and awaiting you on Monday’s doorstep is—you got it—your sack of regrets and rejections.
Some even take the sack to church. Perhaps religion will help, we reason. But instead of removing a few stones, some well-meaning but misguided preacher may add to the load. God’s messengers sometimes give more hurt than help. And you might leave the church with a few new rocks in your sack.The result? A person slugging his way through life, weighed down by the past. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but it’s hard to be thoughtful when you’re carrying a burlap sack. It’s hard to be affirming when you are affirmation-starved. It’s hard to be forgiving when you feel guilty.
Paul had an interesting observation about the way we treat people. He said it about marriage, but the principle applies in any relationship. “The man who loves his wife loves himself” (Ephesians 5:28). There is a correlation between the way you feel about yourself and the way you feel about others. If you are at peace with yourself—if you like yourself—you will get along with others.
The converse is also true. If you don’t like yourself, if you are ashamed, embarrassed, or angry, other people are going to know it. The tragic part of the burlap-sack story is we tend to throw our stones at those we love. Unless the cycle is interrupted. Which takes us to the question, “How does a person get relief?” Which, in turn, takes us to one of the kindest verses in the Bible, “Come to me, all of you who are tired and have heavy loads, and I will give you rest. Accept my teachings and learn from me, because I am gentle and humble in spirit, and you will find rest for your lives. The teaching I ask you to accept is easy; the load I give you to carry is light” (Matthew 11:28—30).
You knew I was going to say that. I can see you holding this book and shaking your head. “I’ve tried that. I’ve read the Bible, I’ve sat on the pew—but I’ve never received relief.” If that is the case, could I ask a delicate but deliberate question? Could it be that you went to religion and didn’t go to God? Could it be that you went to a church, but never saw Christ?
“Come to me,” the verse reads.
It’s easy to go to the wrong place. I did yesterday. I was in Portland, Maine, catching a flight to Boston. Went to the desk, checked my bag, got my ticket, and went to the gate. I went past security, took my seat, and waited for the flight to be called. I waited and waited and waited—finally, I went up to the desk to ask the attendant and she looked at me and said, “You’re at the wrong gate.”
Now, what if I’d pouted and sighed, “Well, there must not be a flight to Boston. Looks like I’m stuck.”
You would have said to me, “You’re not stuck. You’re just at the wrong gate. Go down to the right gate and try again.”
It’s not that you haven’t tried—you’ve tried for years to deal with your past. Alcohol. Affairs. Workaholism. Religion.
Jesus says He is the solution for weariness of soul.
(to be continued in the next post!)
August 20 2010 | Bible and Blog and Christianity and Church and Devotions/Devotionals and Faith and Family and God and Grace and Hope and Inspirational and Jesus and Life and Love and Mercy and Opinion and People and Personal and Philosophy and Quotes and Religion and Spiritual and Theology and Thoughts and Uncategorized | No Comments »
Water You turned into wine
Opened the eyes of the blind
There’s no one like you
None like You
Into the darkness you shine
Out of the ashes we rise
There is no one like You
None like You
Our God is greater
Our God is stronger
God you are higher than any other
Our God is Healer
Awesome in power
Our God, Our God
and if our God is for us
then who could ever stop us
and if our God is with us
then what could stand against
July 18 2010 | Bible and Blog and Christianity and Church and Devotions/Devotionals and Faith and Family and God and Grace and Hope and Inspirational and Jesus and Life and Love and Mercy and Opinion and People and Personal and Philosophy and Quotes and Religion and Spiritual and Theology and Thoughts and Uncategorized and Videos and music | No Comments »
He’s not mad at you
He’s not disappointed
His grace is greater still,
than all of your wrong choices
He is full of mercy and he is ever kind
Hear his invitation, His arms are open wide
You can come as you are,
with all your broken pieces
And all your shameful scars
The pain you hold in your heart,
bring it all to Jesus
You can come as you are
Louder than the voice that whispers your unworthy
Hear the sound of love,
that tells a different story
Shattering your darkness and pushing through the lies
How tenderly he calls you,
His arms are open wide
You can come as you are,
with all your broken pieces
And all your shameful scars
The pain you hold in your heart,
bring it all to Jesus
You can come as you are
You can come as you are
You can come as you are with all your broken pieces
And all your shameful scars
The pain you hold in your heart,
bring it all to Jesus
You can come as you are
July 05 2010 | Bible and Blog and Christianity and Church and Devotions/Devotionals and Faith and Family and God and Grace and Hope and Inspirational and Jesus and Life and Love and Mercy and Opinion and People and Personal and Philosophy and Quotes and Religion and Spiritual and Theology and Thoughts and Uncategorized and Videos and music | 15 Comments »
(continued from the previous post)
(email devotional by Max Lucado found at maxlucado.com)
He had turned his back on the sea to follow the Messiah. He had left the boats thinking he’d never return. But now he’s back. Full circle. Same sea. Same boat. Maybe even the same spot.
But this isn’t the same Peter. Three years of living with the Messiah have changed him. He’s seen too much. Too many walking crippled, vacated graves, too many hours hearing his words. He’s not the same Peter. It’s the same Galilee, but a different fisherman.
Why did he return? What brought him back to Galilee after the crucifixion? Despair? Some think so—I don’t. Hope dies hard for a man who has known Jesus. I think that’s what Peter has. That’s what brought him back. Hope. A bizarre hope that on the sea where he knew him first, he would know him again.
So Peter is in the boat, on the lake. Once again he’s fished all night. Once again the sea has surrendered nothing.
His thoughts are interrupted by a shout from the shore. “Catch any fish?” Peter and John look up. Probably a villager. “No!” they yell. “Try the other side!” the voice yells back. John looks at Peter. What harm? So out sails the net. Peter wraps the rope around his wrist to wait.
But there is no wait. The rope pulls taut and the net catches. Peter sets his weight against the side of the boat and begins to bring in the net; reaching down, pulling up, reaching down, pulling up. He’s so intense with the task, he misses the message.
John doesn’t. The moment is déjà vu. This has happened before. The long night. The empty net. The call to cast again. Fish flapping on the floor of the boat. Wait a minute. He lifts his eyes to the man on the shore. “It’s him,” he whispers.
Then louder, “It’s Jesus.”
Then shouting, “It’s the Lord, Peter. It’s the Lord!”
Peter turns and looks. Jesus has come. Not just Jesus the teacher, but Jesus the death-defeater, Jesus the king … Jesus the victor over darkness. Jesus the God of heaven and earth is on the shore … and he’s building a fire.
Peter plunges into the water, swims to the shore, and stumbles out wet and shivering and stands in front of the friend he betrayed. Jesus has prepared a bed of coals. Both are aware of the last time Peter had stood near a fire. Peter had failed God, but God had come to him.
For one of the few times in his life, Peter is silent. What words would suffice? The moment is too holy for words. God is offering breakfast to the friend who betrayed him. And Peter is once again finding grace at Galilee.
What do you say at a moment like this?
What do you say at a moment such as this?
It’s just you and God. You and God both know what you did. And neither one of you is proud of it. What do you do?
You might consider doing what Peter did. Stand in God’s presence. Stand in his sight. Stand still and wait. Sometimes that’s all a soul can do. Too repentant to speak, but too hopeful to leave—we just stand.
Stand amazed.
He has come back.
He invites you to try again. This time, with him.
From He Still Moves Stones: Everyone Needs a Miracle
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 1999) Max Lucado
June 22 2010 | Bible and Blog and Christianity and Church and Devotions/Devotionals and Faith and Family and God and Grace and Hope and Inspirational and Jesus and Life and Love and Mercy and Opinion and People and Personal and Philosophy and Quotes and Religion and Spiritual and Theology and Thoughts and Uncategorized | No Comments »
(email devotional by Max Lucado found at maxlucado.com)
When You Let God Down
The sun was in the water before Peter noticed it—a wavy circle of gold on the surface of the sea. A fisherman is usually the first to spot the sun rising over the crest of the hills. It means his night of labor is finally over.
But not for this fisherman. Though the light reflected on the lake, the darkness lingered in Peter’s heart. The wind chilled, but he didn’t feel it. His friends slept soundly, but he didn’t care. The nets at his feet were empty, the sea had been a miser, but Peter wasn’t thinking about that.
His thoughts were far from the Sea of Galilee. His mind was in Jerusalem, reliving an anguished night. As the boat rocked, his memories raced:
the clanking of the Roman guard,
the flash of a sword and the duck of a head,
a touch for Malchus, a rebuke for Peter,
soldiers leading Jesus away.
“What was I thinking?” Peter mumbled to himself as he stared at the bottom of the boat. Why did I run?
Peter had run; he had turned his back on his dearest friend and run. We don’t know where. Peter may not have known where. He found a hole, a hut, an abandoned shed—he found a place to hide and he hid.
He had bragged, “Everyone else may stumble … but I will not” (Matthew 26:33). Yet he did. Peter did what he swore he wouldn’t do. He had tumbled face first into the pit of his own fears. And there he sat. All he could hear was his hollow promise. Everyone else may stumble … but I will not. Everyone else … I will not. I will not. I will not. A war raged within the fisherman.
At that moment the instinct to survive collided with his allegiance to Christ, and for just a moment allegiance won. Peter stood and stepped out of hiding and followed the noise till he saw the torch-lit jury in the courtyard of Caiaphas.
He stopped near a fire and warmed his hands. The fire sparked with irony. The night had been cold. The fire was hot. But Peter was neither. He was lukewarm.
“Peter followed at a distance,” Luke described (Luke 22:54 NIV).
He was loyal … from a distance. That night he went close enough to see, but not close enough to be seen. The problem was, Peter was seen. Other people near the fire recognized him. “You were with him,” they had challenged. “You were with the Nazarene.” Three times people said it, and each time Peter denied it. And each time Jesus heard it.
Please understand that the main character in this drama of denial is not Peter, but Jesus. Jesus, who knows the hearts of all people, knew the denial of his friend. Three times the salt of Peter’s betrayal stung the wounds of the Messiah.
How do I know Jesus knew? Because of what he did. Then “the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter” (Luke 22:61 NIV). When the rooster crowed, Jesus turned. His eyes searched for Peter and they found him. At that moment there were no soldiers, no accusers, no priests. At that predawn moment in Jerusalem there were only two people—Jesus and Peter.
Peter would never forget that look. Though Jesus’ face was already bloody and bruised, his eyes were firm and focused. They were a scalpel, laying bare Peter’s heart. Though the look had lasted only a moment, it lasted forever.
And now, days later on the Sea of Galilee, the look still seared. It wasn’t the resurrection that occupied his thoughts. It wasn’t the empty tomb. It wasn’t the defeat of death. It was the eyes of Jesus seeing his failure. Peter knew them well. He’d seen them before. In fact he’d seen them on this very lake. (Continued next [post])
From He Still Moves Stones: Everyone Needs a Miracle
Copyright (Thomas Nelson, 1999) Max Lucado
June 18 2010 | Bible and Blog and Christianity and Church and Devotions/Devotionals and Faith and Family and God and Grace and Hope and Inspirational and Jesus and Life and Love and Mercy and Opinion and People and Personal and Philosophy and Quotes and Religion and Spiritual and Theology and Thoughts and Uncategorized | No Comments »
But God will shoot them with arrows; suddenly they will be struck down.
Jesus stood with a group of His followers. In the distance, a crowd appeared, pushing a naked woman along in front of them. They cast her down at the Lord’s feet and said, “What should we do with this adulteress?” They hoped to trap Jesus into advising sin. Aware of the trap, Jesus gazed deeply into the eyes of the people. He stooped down and scribbled in the dust. Abruptly, He stood back up and said, “The one among you who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.”
His answer struck like a bolt of lightning. Words of pure love and power exploded their conceit, and they were forced to look at the truth of God openly and honestly. The sin was not at issue. What mattered was forgiveness. The hateful crowd was shot through the heart by an arrow of God’s goodness. Killed was the sin of unrighteousness, God will expose it for what it is.
Prayer: “Turn my darkness into light, O Lord, and guide me away from things that are sinful and wrong. Teach me to love my neighbors rather than judge them. Let me cast love and peace, instead of stones. Amen.”
(devotional from Wisdom From the Psalms at Christianity.com)
May 18 2010 | Bible and Blog and Christianity and Church and Devotions/Devotionals and Faith and Family and God and Grace and Hope and Inspirational and Jesus and Life and Love and Mercy and Opinion and People and Personal and Philosophy and Quotes and Religion and Spiritual and Theology and Thoughts and Uncategorized | No Comments »
One Sunday years ago as I was preaching about the Christmas story, I suggested that if we want a true picture of Christmas in our minds, we have to envision a cradle with the shadow of the cross looming over it. One of the ladies in the choir came up to me afterward and told me she was an illustrator who, during the previous Christmas, had put together a Christmas card like that. She had drawn a picture of the manger, and spreading over it was the shadow of a cross. Some people think this takes the romance out of Christmas. No, it puts the truth into it.
The road to Bethlehem ended up at Calvary. Jesus’ ultimate purpose in coming was to die for our sins and to be our Redeemer. I’m afraid we get so caught up in the external things of the season that we forget that the Babe of Bethlehem came into the world to be your Savior and mine. He was born in humanity and in humility so that He might ultimately become the sin bearer of the world on the cross. The prickly straw of the manger prefigured the nails that would one day pierce His skin.
Jesus was very aware of this, and one of the things we discover as we read the Gospels is that He wanted the entire world to know His mission. He repeatedly used a phrase that, it seems to me, is very significant. He kept saying, “I have come. . . .” I have come to do this, and to do this, and to do this. On thirteen occasions in the Gospels, Jesus used that phrase I have come . . .
This phrase presupposes our Lord’s preexistence. Jesus Christ is unlike any other person who has ever lived, in that He possesses a double nature. He is both God and man, fully divine and fully human. In Isaiah 9 the Messiah is called the Mighty God. John’s Gospel opens by saying, “The Word was God,” and it closes with Thomas declaring, “My Lord and my God.”
As God, Jesus has always existed and always will exist. He is eternal in the heavens. The prophet Micah told us that His comings and goings are from old, even from everlasting. But on that remarkable night in Bethlehem, God the Son took upon himself a second nature and became a human being. The Word became flesh.
Now, if Jesus Christ is the eternal God who intentionally became a man, that means His coming to earth was pre-planned. He himself designed His mission before His virgin birth. He was able to look down on this planet, see a great need, and say, “I am going to be born in order to meet that critical need.” And, having done so, we would expect Him to tell us the reason for such an indescribable wonder as this. Thus the importance of those three words that He repeatedly used: I have come. . . . He planned his trip in advance, chose the route, and deliberately took the Calvary Road.
He Came to Manifest the Father
First, Jesus came to manifest the Father. Jesus said in John 5:43, “I have come in My Father’s name.” As John 1:18 explains, “No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.” The Calvary Road is the greatest revelation of our heavenly Father’s love. He demonstrated His love for us in that though we are hell-bound sinners, Christ died for us that through Him we might be reconciled to the God whom He manifests.
The Presbyterian preacher, Clarence Macartney, once said that when he was growing up, his family and his church didn’t sing hymns; they only sang the Psalms of David. “But,” he added, “whenever my father was in a particularly good humor—when his work in the study was over or things had gone well at the college—he used to whistle the tune of a hymn. It was always the same tune, ‘There Is a Fountain Filled with Blood.’”
Jesus came to represent the Father’s love by dying on Calvary’s Cross, giving us a song in our hearts so that our very souls want to whistle about it, for there is a fountain filled with blood drawn from Immanuel’s veins. Christ is heaven’s great ambassador who came to manifest the Father and reconcile us to God.
He Came to Preach a Message
Second, Jesus came to preach a message. We read in Mark’s Gospel that one day in Capernaum, Jesus rose early in the morning and hiked into the nearby mountains to pray. When the disciples found Him, they wanted Him to return with them to the village, but Jesus replied, “Let us go into the next towns, that I may preach there also, because for this purpose I have come forth” (Mark 1:38).
For this purpose I have come—to preach, to proclaim a message. It’s the message of the Calvary Road. It’s the Gospel, and the word “Gospel” literally means the Good News, the Good Tidings. This is one of the Bible’s best and most wonderful terms, yet it still seems like an understatement to me.
If you were trapped in a collapsed cave, running out of air, shut in claustrophobic darkness, only minutes away from death and you heard workmen breaking through the rubble to rescue you, would you say, “Well, that’s good news”?
If you were struggling to pay your bills, wondering how you were going to make ends meet, and an attorney informed you that an unknown relative left you twenty million dollars, would you call that “good news”?
If you were on a hospital bed, connected to tubes and monitors dying of a terrible, loathsome disease, and the doctor came in and said, “We’ve just discovered a little pill. Swallow this and you’ll be healed.” Would that be “good news”?
Here we are, poverty-stricken sinners, separated from God by our imperfections, trapped on a doomed planet, dying, facing death and judgment and hell. Yet because He loved us, God himself became a man who willingly traveled the Calvary Road in our place that we might be forgiven of our sins and receive eternal life.
Is that Good News?
It’s more than good news, but we don’t have a word in our vocabulary adequate to describe it. The angels just put it like this: “Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people. For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (emphasis added).
He Came to Enrich Our Lives
Finally, He came to enrich our lives. John 10:10 says, “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”
In New York State, there are two cities that draw water from nearby mountains. One of the cities depends on a lake which tends to dry up in times of drought, forcing the city to issue water emergencies and pass all sorts of laws about water usage. But the other city gets its water supply from a lake in the Catskills that never goes dry. It is fed by underground streams, and that city never worries about having enough water. They could never exhaust the lake.
So many of us, even as Christians, forget that we have an endless supply of grace. We have an endless supply of joy. We have an endless supply of peace. We don’t have to worry about our spiritual reserves, but we’ve got to tap into them by faith. If we’re committed to Christ and walking in the Spirit, we have an ocean of God’s blessing to draw from every day. We have life in abundance because of the Calvary Road.
Someone once said that in Great Britain, all roads lead to London. For Christ, all roads led to Calvary. From Bethlehem’s Road to Egypt’s Road to the route through Galilee and on to Jerusalem, He set His face like a flint to tread the Calvary Road. That was His ultimate mission, and He never forgot His purpose. He repeatedly said, “I have come . . . I have come . . . I have come . . .” He was ever about His Father’s business.
And because Jesus said, I have come . . . , we can sing: Joy to the world. The Lord has come. Let earth receive Her king . . . Let every heart prepare Him room.
Has your heart prepared Him room? Is there room in your heart for Jesus? He invites us to take the straight and narrow road, the way of the Cross, and to follow Him with all our hearts. Will you do that this Christmas?
(by Dr. David Jeremiah – Turning Point Ministries)
December 06 2009 | Bible and Blog and Christianity and Church and Devotions/Devotionals and Faith and Family and God and Grace and Hope and Inspirational and Jesus and Life and Love and Mercy and Opinion and People and Personal and Philosophy and Quotes and Religion and Spiritual and Theology and Thoughts and Uncategorized | No Comments »
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