Witness Post

I know it's been awhile, but I have a couple of God moments I want to share.
On our return from Montana a couple of weeks ago we detoured south to spend a few days with some friends from Elkhart KS. One of the friends we visited, Jay & Sondra, have a dog that is 106 in dog years named Lady. Lady stays very close to Sondra. In fact, if she happens to fall asleep (which is quite often) and Sondra leaves the room, when she awakes she begins to search diligently from room to room until she finds her again, and then she lays back down close to wherever Sondra may be. God wants us to act the same way. Every time we realize that we're not right next to Him, we should search diligently for Him, and not rest until we have gotten back into His Presence.

Here's another God moment. I am walking as often as possible in a park next to our house. At the top of the hill I noticed a sign post a little ways off the trail that reads,'Witness Post - Survey Boundary Marker'. I believe God wants our lives to be witness posts for those without Christ in their lives. Our lives are to be the boundary markers for His righteousness & love. People ought to be able to walk past us and that we stand for something in life greater than ourselves - Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks for reading.
PJ

Prayer for Fred

My wife left this morning for Montana. The Dr's there called the family home to be with their dad who has had a history of heart problems, and recently has gotten much worse. Now mind you, this happened 4 years ago, and once everyone got there, her dad decided he would go ahead and live a little longer. Maybe the same thing will happen again, and we'll all get to enjoy Fred's wit and wisdom a while longer. If this is indeed his time to meet Jesus face to face, he is ready, as is the family. But even though all are ready, the sorrow & lost are still there to walk through. So please take a moment and say a prayer for Carole & her family. Thank you.
PJ

The Lost & Found Room

At a recent meeting, held in a church, our ministry team met in a room in the back of the church, with a Lost & Found placard on the door. When I entered the room, I noticed the 4 cement weights with attached ropes setting in the corner. Many thoughts ran through my head, but this is the one I would like to share with you today. Until we discover just how desperately we all need Christ's forgiveness, and what it means to walk through life with Him as our Lord, we all go through this life somewhat lost, looking for answers to life's questions with very little success. And every time we make a wrong choice because of the lies we believe, it begins to feel like those blocks of cement looked. Only instead of setting in the corner, they are fastened to our hearts & souls, weighing us down. What was needed was for us to find Christ. When we do, and we accept His payment for our wrong life choices, that weight is removed and cast aside. For me, that's what that room represented. The Lost & Found room where the weights of life's wrong choices are discarded. I hope you have discarded all of yours. Blessings.
PJ

Chipmunk in the Squirrel Cage

Last week we experienced a cold snap, like 1 degree, that lasted for a couple of days. About 5 days later my wife went over to the churches parsonage which has been vacant for several months to check on things. The ice cascade out of the back door provided her with an initial response that something was wrong, and when she opened the door and heard water running her fear was quickly confirmed. Evidently, a water pipe in the upstairs bathroom ruptured do to the cold, sending water raining down in the basement and through the bathroom wall into the kitchen and dining room area. The basement sump pumps are all that saved it from being worse that it is. As it is the false ceiling in the basement is now all over the floor, the carpet is soaking wet, & the drywall in the downstairs bathroom is no longer dry and rests on top of the sink & stool.
Once I found the water shut off and contacted the insurance company, we started the clean up process. I called a national company that deals with such things and met them at the parsonage the next day. But when I tried to turn up the heat to help dry it out, we discovered that the furnace wasn't working. AH-HA the reason the pipes froze! So I called our furnace guy, who came right over. What he found was a chipmunk, now dead an decaying, stuck between the blower fan (i.e., squirrel cage) and the blower fan housing, effectively locking up the furnace blower so that even though the furnace would come on, it wouldn't heat the house. The rascal had entered through the dryer vent, chewed through the plastic flex hose, found its way into the heater vents to the furnace, chewed through the filter, only to come to his demise when the blower kicked on, I'm sure quite unexpectedly.
OK, that got me thinking about us and God. There are times when we go vacant from God. We get comfortable with our relationship and slowly stop spending time in His Word every day. Or maybe there's that part of our life we withhold from Him because we're not ready to give Him control of it yet. There's several ways I think we go 'vacant' from our relationship with God. Then, in our vacant state, 'trouble' shows up in the most adorable fashion, and appearing quite innocent begins to scamper around in our 'vacancy'. And before you know it, havoc is being reeked in our 'vacant area' at a great personal cost. And instead of being on fire and full of light, we end up the frozen chosen wandering in the dark.
PJ