My Utmost for His Highest / April 16th

I just had to share this, it comes right out of the devo book My Utmost For His Highest by Oswald Chambers.

John 12:36 "While you have the light, believe in the light . . ."

We all have moments when we feel better than ever before, and we say, "I feel fit for anything; if only I could always be like this!" We are not meant to be. Those moments are moments of insight which we have to live up to even when we do not feel like it. Many of us are no good for the everyday world when we are not on the mountaintop. Yet we must bring our everyday life up to the standard revealed to us on the mountaintop when we were there.
Never allow a feeling that was awakened in you on the mountaintop to evaporate. Don't place yourself on the shelf by thinking, "How great to be in such a wonderful state of mind!" Act immediately - do something, even if your only reason to act is that you would rather not. If, during a prayer meeting, God shows you something to do, don't say, "I'll do it" - just do it! Pick yourself up by the back of the neck and shake off your fleshly laziness. Laziness can always be seen in our cravings for a mountaintop experience; all we talk about is our planning for our time on the mountain. We must learn to live in the ordinary "gray" day according to what we saw on the mountain.
Don't give up because you have been blocked and confused once - go after it again. Burn your bridges behind you, and stand committed to God by an act of your own will. Never change your decisions, but be sure to make your decisions in the light of what you saw and learned on the mountain.

what is important?

How do we teach our kids the things that are truly important? We tell them this or that is important. We correct or discipline them when they do things that are contrary to what we teach them as important. We do our best to show them by example the things we hold as important. This however brakes down somewhere along the way. We tell our kids that it's important not to lie but when someone calls who we don't want to talk to we tell them to say we aren't here. We tell them that it's important to care about others but when the guy on the street is asking for money we grumble something about how they would probably just use it for drugs and speed on by.
As followers of Jesus we do the same things. We say that we care about people and yet only reach out to the ones who look and sound like us, or we avoid those who may smell. We say that we are a follower of Jesus and yet do things that he would never do, go places he would never have us go, or say things he would never say. I went to hear a guy named Andy Kampman speak last night about reaching the world and I wondered when our comfort became so important in serving God? I realized that I say I want to follow Jesus, but cringe at the thought of being outside of my comfort zone. I sat I am about loving people but when was the last time I committed myself to praying for God to send workers to those people who are dying without knowing Christ? Or when was the last time I prayed for those who are trying to reach them. How dare we call ourselves Christians and not hold to what Christ saw as important! Forgive us God for this injustice! Forgive us for dragging your name down to our level of comfort! Forgive us for misrepresenting what you see as important!

Eat Your Soup!

Last week, Albertein made some awesome potato soup that I absolutely love and am quite sure I could eat my weight in! It's full of bacon, cheese, and of coarse potatoes and for some reason Jackson got it into his head that he just would not eat it. Well, the way it works at our house is that what we have for supper is what we have, and if you don't like it well, tough. So as Jackson made his displeasure known, I informed him that he was going to have to sit there until he ate his soup and that was that, and of coarse that caused more whining, which in turn caused my temperature to go up and so on and so forth. Anyway, after quite a while of this, Jackson decided that it would be better to just suck it up and eat his soup than to have to sit at the table all day and night and low and behold, he found out that he loves potato soup. As I watched him scarf down his soup that he finally tried I said, "See Jackson, isn't it so much easier when you just do what I ask?" And in my mind or heart, or both I heard God say "Yes Luke; isn't it so much easier when you just do what I ask?"
Why is it that the majority of the time we fight so hard against what God has for us, and yet when we finally shut up and follow Him, we find out that following Him is where we always wanted to be.

ready to follow?

Do you ever wonder why you are where you are? Why you are who you are? Why you live the life that you are living? I often wonder how I got where I am, not that I am unhappy about where I am. I love my wife, I love my kids, I love my profession, but still I can't help but wonder about the steps that I have taken down the path that has lead me to this point. What if things would have been different? Where would I be if I would have made better choices? Why didn't God choose to develop one of my other gifts into a profession? As we live out our existence in a fallen world, I really think these questions are natural because all of us stray off the path at one point or another.

In the midst of all this I was reminded of the account of Jesus reinstating Peter after Peter's denial. Do you remember the situation? Jesus had risen from the dead after three days of being in the grave and he shows up on the beach while his disciples were out fishing. After Jesus cooks them all a hearty breakfast, he pulls Peter aside and three times he asks him if he loves him. After the third time of Peter saying yes, and Jesus telling him to feed his sheep, Peter looks at John standing a little ways away and says, "Well, what about him?" I love Jesus' answer here! Jesus says, "What about him? If I want to keep him alive until I come back, I will." And then he said, "You follow me." The thing I love about this is that no matter where we find ourselves, God is calling us to serve Him where we are. You don't have to know where tomorrow will lead you, or how you got to today; the only thing you need to know is that no matter what God calls you to do, you are ready and willing to do it.