Anywhere with Jesus I can safely go

I love the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes – the little boy and his stuffed tiger for the ones that don’t know it by name.  My all-time favorite is a June 13, 1992 strip (yes, I had to look it up) where for the first 2 panels, Calvin is burping a huge, window-rattling burp.  The third panel his mother yells at him and asks what he has to say after something like that.  He replies, “great diaphragm control, huh?”  The last panel shows him sitting on his bed, obviously sent to his room in trouble, saying, “when I’m a great soloist, she’ll be sorry.”  Granted, it’s a visual joke – being a comic strip and all – but I love it (and most of you aren’t surprised that it’s THIS one that’s my favorite).  But I have them emailed to me every day.  And like most strips, there are little stories.  Each strip tells a piece of a broader story arc.  On one particular arc, Calvin & Hobbes are at the zoo.   The first panel shows him talking to his mom who is wearing a black skirt.  Then when see him walking around the zoo gawking at all he sees while the black skirt is in front of him.  But then he notices that the woman in front of him isn’t his mother!  And now he is LOST!  She asks him what his mother looks like and he says, “from the knees down, she looks just like you”.

How often have I done that in my own life?  I get too busy looking at everything around me…work, soccer, friends, work, even church activities…but I get so busy looking at everything going on around me that I take my eyes off the one I should be following.  Ever been there?  You think you’re right in His footsteps – but you’re not actually actively looking at Him – just generally going along thinking you’re behind Him.  But somewhere along the way, the path turned, and He turned with it, but we missed it…drove off the road…lost in the wilderness.  We were so busy looking at everything else that we forgot to actually look AT Jesus.  And there’s moment of realization that you’ve wandered off the path.  You have that “how did it get this far?” moment.  You think you’re so far lost that you’ll never find your way back to the path.  Lost, just lost.  Despair hits you.  You start saying things like “if ever went back to church, the roof would collapse on me.”  And in the process, you undervalue the amount that Jesus was willing to pay for you, and you undermine the power of Jesus’ blood to cover your sins…whatever they are. 

But do you know what you have to do?  It’s really simple.  Just admit you’re lost.  Stop trying to get YOURSELF unlost (yes, I just made up that word, but you got the point).  You’re the one that got you in this boat to begin with, so just stop saving yourself.  And then yell for help for all you’re worth!.  Cry out to Jesus, if you will.  He knows you’re lost.  He saw you get that way.

Quick personal illustration time.  Way back when, my dad and I where hunting up in the Ozarks.  Beautiful country up there, by the way.  But we were hunting on the side of this mountain, walked all through trees and brush and who knows what looking for squirrels that we’d heard barking in the distance, and then dad asked me if I could get us back to the trail where we’d parked the motorcycles.  Well I knew everything, so I could SURELY get us back to the little path we’d walked away from.  We were standing next to a fence, so I started leading the way away from the fence.  And in my mind it was Sergeant Dwayne and his battered troops returning from the war – I was like 14, not like I was doing this at 30.  Well, maybe I did stuff like this at 30, but THIS time, I was only about 14.  But here were the troops – guns in hand, almost out of ammo, and I was single-handedly leading them out of the wilderness and heading for home.  Weary, hungry, lonely they were finally going to fight our way out and…”Hey!  Here’s another fence!” is what I said when I stopped visualizing military glory and realized what I was seeing.  Dad just laughed.  He knew what I had been doing all along.  I’d started out walking away from the fence, and for the past 15 minutes, I’d slowly been curving us in a big circle leading us right back towards it.  “That’s the same fence…I’ve been watching you walk slowly to your left, the farther you walked around this mountain.  Every brush pile you went around, every tree you avoided, your circled us a little more to the left.”  And then he led me to the road…Back to the bikes and the way out.

It’s the exact same thing with the Cross.  We take our eyes off of where we’re headed…and we slowly start that circle back to where we started.  The sinful nature, they call it.  Selfish desires.  We slowly start that circle back to what we want and not what God wants.  But when we see that fence…and realize that we’ve completely circled back.  Jesus already knows it.  Just like my dad, sometimes He’s followed right along behind you.  Watching you circle around and trying whisper in your ear to turn around.  And sometimes He knows that we’re stubborn people and lets us wander on our own.  And He’ll stop and wait for us…calls us back to the path if we’ll listen for His calling.  Like the parable of the shepherd, He leaves the 99 that are safe to go and get the one that has wandered away.  And the lost sheep recognizes the Master’s voice.  But if that lost sheep keeps trying to finding its own way out, it’s only keeps getting more and more lost.  So when you get THAT lost…just can NOT find your way back.  Just stop and cry for help.  Jesus will get you back on the path.  Take you by the hand and help you out of your struggles with sin.  But just as important as not trying to find your own solution is actually wanting to be found.  Don’t cry for help, then continue to struggle against Him when He takes your hand. 

Listen for the Whisper that leads you home when you’re lost.  But more than that think about how much easier it would have been better if we’d been following closely enough to not get lost in the first place.  The world is full of distractions, and (like Calvin at the zoo) if we only keep glancing at the One who leads us, we might get tricked into following the wrong shepherd.  When the devil tempted Jesus, he did it with Scripture.  2 Corinthians tells us that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light.  So how closely are we following?  Are we following just closely enough to hopefully kind of keep up, or are we holding onto Jesus’ hand everywhere we go?  Because from the knees down, Satan can try and look just like Him.  Don’t try to be like a kid at the store…close enough to see mom, but trying to stay far enough away to still find mischief and be out of swatting distance.  Walk hand-in-hand with Jesus…everywhere you go.  And like a cloud in the daytime and a pillar of fire at night, you’ll clearly see the path you’re walking together.  And you’ll never walk it alone.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

Rainy Days and Mondays

Garfield, the comic strip cat has three basic recurring themes.  He loves lasagna.  He loves sleep.  And he hates Mondays.  Preach it, Brother Garfield!  Right?  I mean at the office, it’s a universal greeting, isn’t it?  At the coffee pot, in the halls, in the parking lot, with each person that comes to your desk…it’s always the same, right?  Not the lasagna part – but the Monday hating.  It’s always some grunt of greeting followed some expression of hatred of Mondays.  We reference how short the weekends are, and how we can’t believe it’s Monday again ALREADY!!  We hate Mondays.  We can’t wait to come up with new ways to gripe about Monday and the nasty, evil things it undoubtedly holds for us.

We have a weekend’s worth of emails to catch up on.  We have voicemails from someone about something you did Friday…and who can remember what they did on Friday 30 minutes before quitting time?!  I mean, c’mon!  I was barely paying attention to it then…much less able to remember it on Monday morning.  I mean, it’s Monday morning after all!!  And more than that…there’s a WHOLE week ahead of us!  Ugh!!  FIVE FULL WORK DAYS in our immediate future.  That’s another prime reason to loathe the beast that is “Monday morning” right there!  All week lies out there ahead of you.  Monday afternoon is even better than Monday morning simply because you have 4 hours under your belt, and quitting time Friday is that much closer.

You want more proof of the universal disdain for Mondays?  Look at the number of songs written about how bad Mondays are.  The Mamas and the Papas, The Carpenters, The Bangles (just to name the first three off the top of my head – although truthfully, that might be the whole list) all sing about how bad Monday is.  The only two people who seem to like Monday are the NFL for Monday Night Football and Jimmy Buffett – and apparently Jimmy just hates brown L.A. haze more than Mondays, because he thinks “come Monday, it’ll be alright”.  But for the rest of us, let’s face it…we walk into Monday morning like a dog being dragged into the vet’s office.  Every muscle clenched as tight as we can clench them, and digging our claws into the floor as far as we can dig them, and STILL we’re being dragged into Monday morning.  And honestly, we’d rather just take a beating with a stick than face a Monday morning.

But if there was ever a day of the week that we should come to work happy…and smiling…and dare I say whistling and dancing like a pack of fat, happy dwarves with corny names, it should be Monday mornings!!  We’ve just come off of a Sunday, after all!  We’ve shared some singing with fellow Christians.  We’ve heard an uplifting sermon reminding us of God’s love.  We’ve prayed in earnest for those we care about.  We’ve dreamed together of how it will be when we all get to Heaven, God’s Family (to borrow a line).  For me, I never feel more uplifted than Sunday after church.  I never feel more assured that everything will be ok than Sunday after church.  I never feel God’s presence with me more than I do Sunday after church.  I never feel more excited to be a Christian in the midst of God’s creation than I do Sunday after church.  I never feel more like screaming the Gospel from the mountain tops than I do Sunday after church.  And I’ll spend all day singing a particularly uplifting song that we sang that morning.  As a matter of fact, on this particular Monday morning as I’m writing this devotional, I spent all day yesterday singing “Beautiful Lamb”.  I love that song, and it sums up so much of what Christianity means to me.  But apparently it’s not joyful enough to keep me from plummeting from the Sunday morning mountaintops to the valleys of Monday mornings.

Listen for the Whisper that asks you if the turning of a clock from Sunday to Monday all it takes to rob us of our joy?  And then ask yourself why that is.  How deep-rooted is our joy in Christ if a simple little thing like a Monday morning is all that it takes to take that joy away from us?  Hallelujah Christ arose…except Monday mornings, when I’m more put out by an email than I am overjoyed about my salvation.  What’s wrong with that picture?  Absolutely everything…that’s what’s wrong with that picture.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com

Be Careful, Little Tongue, What You Say

Darth Vader said, “I am your Father!”

Ferris’ teacher (Ben Stein) said, “Bueller…Bueller…Bueller…”

Michael Corleone said, “Keep your friends close, but keep your enemies closer.”

Forrest Gump said, “Momma always said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates.’”

Rocky Balboa said, “Yo, Adrian…I did it!!”

Spiderman’s Uncle Ben said, “with great power comes great responsibility.”

Jedi Master Yoda said, “Do or do not!  There IS no ‘try’.” (yeah, I threw in 2 Star Wars lines)

Annnnd Rhett Butler said something close to “Frankly, my dear…I just don’t care a whole lot.”

Iconic movie lines.  The lines we remember.  Maybe not the last line of the movie, or even the only memorable line.  I mean, seriously, I included two Star Wars lines and neither was “May the Force be with you.”  (ahhh, there it is) And I imagine that most people reading this little devotional have either heard those lines themselves, or heard someone else quoting them.  People can carry on an entire three-hour conversation simply quoting lines from movies and television…or song lyrics. 

As an off-the-topic aside, they did similar things in biblical days.  They would ask each other questions in Scripture, then answer in Scripture.  AND they knew the Scriptural text so well, that the Scriptures they quoted weren’t always the verses they were actually asking about – but the one either before or after it.  The person being asked would KNOW the verse the first guy was REALLY meaning, and would give his answer…but not the verse he meant, but the verse either before or after it.  And back and forth they’d volley.  Dollar word of the day is “Remezes”, the Jewish art of questions and answers.  And when Jesus was 12 and lost and then found in the temple, what does Luke 2:46-47 say of those in the synagogue?  “Then, after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions.  And all who heard Him were amazed at His understanding and His answers.”  Interesting…Jesus was asking questions and giving answers.  Remezes.  J

Meanwhile…back at the devotional, Ben Cartwright was about to tell Hoss and Little Joe about a quote from Maya Angelou, “I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”  And not that my piddling little devotionals puts me in a class with Maya Angelou, but if there’s one thing that I’VE learned, it’s that sometimes people will never…EVER…forget what you say.  James 3 says that the tongue is a burning fire.  We can burn huge forests to the ground with a single fire.  We see proof of that in California almost every year, it seems.  And we see it every day in our daily lives.  One person can say one thing, and we’ll remember it and hold onto it forever.  People remember the words we say.  Especially when they’re stinging, hateful words.  Now imagine that you’ve said something disgustingly hateful, and it’s the last thing you ever say to that person. 

Several years ago, Andrea and I went to a Razorbacks game with some friends…well, friend and an acquaintance.  The acquaintance was a friend of the friend, and was someone that I considered to be a huge annoyance.  (and yes, I get the irony…I don’t need to have it pointed out that I’m sitting here calling someone ELSE a huge annoyance, I got it thankya ver’ much).  But I’ll get to me and my issues here in short order.  But this guy was just obnoxious and crude, and I generally didn’t enjoy his company most of the time.  That is, until that weekend.  We all had a good time, and upon returning home and unloading the truck, I shook his hand and said, “Hey, man, I had a great time…you were almost human this weekend!”  Yup, that’s what I told him.  And I yucked it up like it was the funniest thing I’d ever said.  And it was the last time (that I can remember) that I ever talked to him.  Simply didn’t cross paths again.  Not because of what I said just happened to not cross again, but it’s something I’ve regretted saying.  But What If what I said was something even worse?  What if I threw out some expletive-filled insult and then promptly quit living?  Is that something that I’d want people to remember about me?

Our light shines even when we’re not actively shining it.  Adrian Rogers is still calling people to Christ.  Adrian Rogers is still having sermons played on the radio, still has books being sold, still sharing the gospel message of Jesus Christ, and has been dead as a hammer since 2005.  And just like his, your light will shine and your testimony will live on long after you’re gone.  People still go to Talladega and fly their Dale Earnhardt #3 flags.  And after you’re gone, people will carry on your legacy.  Friends will talk about you.  Family will talk about you.  And somebody that you said something hateful to will talk about you.  Matthew 12:36 & 37 speaks to that, too.  For those that think that only the red words are important…it only matters what Jesus himself said…well, here’s what Jesus said, “³⁶ But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. ³⁷ For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.”  Did you catch that?  Every.  Careless. Word.  Gotta watch that tongue.  Want another one?  Take 1 Peter 4:11 out for a spin…If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God.  I don’t need to elaborate on that one…pretty much speaks for itself.  But I ask myself, “did God ever tell someone they were almost human?”

It’s worse when we’re teenagers.  Most of the regrets of things said come from my high school years.  Like most of us, I said some things to people that still haunt me.  I’m like Kevin Bacon’s character in the movie Flatliners in that regard.  That’s the movie where several medical students take turns killing themselves and then bringing themselves back to life.  (nice plot, huh?)  Then each one, in turn, is haunted by ghosts of their past sins.  Kevin Bacon’s character is haunted by a girl he tormented as a kid.  He and several other children circled her while insulting every single thing about her…her clothes, her looks, you name it.  His haunt is that same little girl is continually haunting him by hurling the same sort of insults at him.  His solution is to look her up, drive to her house and apologize to her.  She tries to brush it off.  She says things like “oh, that’s just how kids are” and he tells her that under no circumstances was that ok, that it was wrong of them, and they shouldn’t have done it…ever.  She offers forgiveness, and he accepts it, and she thanks him for apologizing.  Ghost goes away.

Ever felt like doing that?  I have.  And in the days of social media, it’s easier than ever to do it.  Why haven’t I?  I don’t know.  Listen for the Whisper that says you can still make amends.  You can make amends before it’s too late to make them.  Maybe the last thing that someone remembers about you will be that you were a Christian that said, “I’m sorry.”  Maybe they’ll remember that…instead of remembering that you were someone that called themselves a Christian and then said, “hey, man, you were almost human this weekend”.  Or someone that said something even worse.  Contrary to what Maya Angelou says, sometimes people remember exactly what we say.  And not only do they remember exactly what we say, they remember that we said it forever.  So while we’re Listening for the Whisper that tells us that we can still apologize for something we’ve said, let’s listen for the one that tells us to not say it in the first place.

~Dwayne

ListenForTheWhisper@comcast.net

http://listenforthewhisper.blogspot.com