When Life Throws You a Curve

For most, if not all of us, it is not a matter of “if” but “when.”

Paul had dotted all the “I’s” and crossed all the “T’s”, but the Bible tells us that “(they) hit a reef, and the ship began to break up.” This remains a big mystery when you follow the sequence of events carefully.
• Paul had prayed.
• Paul had made a positive confession of faith.
• Paul had seen heaven come down in the middle of the violent storm.

However, life threw him curves even though he seemed to be doing all the right things. His life reflects many episodes that remind me of mine.

Take note of this.
• This storm and sinking ship was not in their original plans.
• It came totally unexpected to many on board.
• When they finally saw it coming, they did every thing that was humanly possible to avoid the tragedy, but it happened anyway.

Learning to deal with life when it throws you curves is one of the most important lessons you will ever learn, but we avoid it like a plague or sink into a devilish denial.

It reminds me of the young man who walked into the office of a psychiatrist with a fried egg on top of his head and a piece of bacon dangling over each ear.

Calmly the doctor greeted the young man, and then asked the logical question. “Now, young man, what can I do for you?”

Startled and surprised the young man replied, “Oh, no sir. I don’t need anything. I’m just here to get some help for a friend of mine.”

I get the impression that he was a member of the SS Fraternity. No I don’t mean Social Security or Secret Service. I mean the Super Spiritual Society. They ignore facts and call it faith. They are pretenders not contenders who spend their lives in a state of denial.

Living under delusions and illusions can and will usually have devastating conclusions! Denying that you will not blister if you sit out in a torching 100 degree sun will not isolate you from a sun stroke or deep burns and blisters.

Building a boat was not a dreadful, shameful lack of faith on Noah’s part. It was the very opposite. He saw a curve coming and prepared for it. The Bible states this clearly. “By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house…” (Hebrews 11:7)

Jesus said, “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) He didn’t promise to keep us out of tribulation (curves in life), but He did promise to give us peace in the time of tribulation!

Paul discovered that peace when curves came into his life. The ship was sinking, but his faith was soaring. Battered by winds and soaked by a monsoon he shouted, “Be of good cheer: for I believe God…” (Acts 27:25)

He had a feisty, fighting faith that refused to quit. Curves could not crush him. Disappointments could not destroy him. He set an example for us to follow when curves come our way.

Always accentuate the positive.

That goes against human nature and takes some glamour off the headlines. Sinking ships; howling, winds; hidden rocks; the trauma of seeing and feeling the ship underneath your feet ripping apart; cascading end over end into the swirling water; sinking beneath the water and rising again like a human cork; desperately fighting to keep your head above the water and the water out of your nostrils. That’s what grabs attention and sympathy.

But the really big story was summed up in just 6 fantastic words: “Everyone made it to shore safely.” (The Message 27:44) It’s the success story of survival. It’s the triumphant song that rises above the tragedy. We made it! That’s the positive side of a horrible story.

I admit that roses have thorns, but thank God thorns have roses. Don’t spend your time looking for thorns when curves come your way. Start counting the roses, and accentuate the positive.

Acclimate (adjust) to existing circumstances without seething in hostility.

Curves that come in life do not usually leave us the same as we were before they came our way. You must not hold on to the memories of the past regardless of how good or bad they were. Things may never be as they were again. Turn them loose. Let them go without slipping into a sloppy slough of hostility.

Hostility ordinarily does more harm to the person who insists on being hostile than it does to the person to whom hostility is directed. Don’t let hostility make you an emotional basket case.

Paul could have been angry at the world. He lost everything, but he didn’t lose his cool. He could have been in a rage, but he adjusted to what life brought his way. Of all things, he began to do something for others. He refused to have a self pity party. He became involved in serving people that he didn’t even know and whether intentionally or unintentionally this kept his mind off of himself.

If you need hope, give someone hope. If you need love, give somebody love. If you need a hug, give a hug. The Bible declares, “Give and it shall be given unto you…”

Affirm your faith in God when your ship is falling apart

Paul said, “I believe God…” (Acts 27:25) Say this with me now. I believe God is near not far away. I believe God is Sovereign and in charge of my life right now. I believe by God’s help I will survive and thrive regardless of what I see and feel at this moment. When curves come my way, I still believe God!

Believing God Together!

Pastor Jimmy & Bob

God Wore My Shoes - The True Meaning Of Christmas

“To understand others you should get behind their eyes and walk down their spines,” so declared Rod McKuen.

According to Business Week, Patricia Moore who was a clothes designer, attempted to do that as much as was humanly possibly. She had watched her grandfather grapple with the various challenges that he had being stricken with arthritis, and decided to try to “get behind his eyes and walk down his spine.”

At the age of 25, she reconstructed herself into an elderly woman with bound joints and padded her back into a hump and wore contact lenses smeared with Vaseline. To complete her make-over, she wore support panty hose and a fuzzy wool coat. In other words, she tried to wear his shoes and see the world through his eyes.

Her discoveries were startling. She was ignored in stores, struggled to complete the most common tasks, crossed streets so slowly that the lights changed before she was safely on the other side and found that most people were unconcerned about her circumstances. Needless to say, she had a completely different perspective when she saw the world through his eyes.

Do you remember this scene from To Kill a Mockingbird? One of the actors said, “First of all if you can learn a simple trick, Scout, you’ll get along a lot better with all kinds of folks. You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”

That’s what Jesus did, and this is the true, unadulterated meaning of Christmas. God came down here to wear my shoes and yours also. He climbed into our skin and saw the world through the eyes of a mortal individual, and He quickly discovered that the world looks very different from a smelly cattle shed than seeing it from the Ivory Palaces of heaven.

I am deeply moved by the words of Philippians 2:6-7 that describes the condescension of Jesus Christ. It says, “Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men…”

Speech can go no higher. “The Word became flesh…” (John 1:14) The Eternal God put on a vesture of human flesh. The Ancient of Days became a Babe in a manger. The Lord became a mere lad. The Maker became a man. The Mediator was speechless. The Mighty God was stuffed into a diaper. The Nourisher had to be nourished from His mother’s breast.

Striking! God wore our shoes…holes in the soles, scuffed toes and broken shoe strings.

It is empathizing with earthlings and understanding gained through experience. The Bible tells us that “he is touched with the feelings of our infirmities.” (Hebrews 4:15) It is stated like this in The Message. “We don’t have a priest who is out of touch with our reality.” He tasted death. He tottered under the weight of the Cross that He was forced to carry. He was tortured. He was treated with utmost disdain. He tolerated the scorn of friend and foe alike. He was tempted to betray God and sell out to the Devil. He walked in my shoes and looked at the world through my eyes.

I wish that we could capture the wonder and awe of the true meaning of Christmas as did the man who told Mark Twain, the author of Huckleberry Finn, that he wished he had never read Huckleberry Finn. The author was so dumb founded that he blurted out, “Why would you make such a remark?” Oh, what an answer he got back. “”I wish I had never read Huckleerry Finn before so that I could have the pleasure again of reading it for the first time.”

Look at Christmas all over again as if it were the first glimpse of the breath taking birth of the Son of God. We see Him in swaddling clothes, but in reality, it was God putting on my shoes and yours….this is what He saw.

When God looked at the world walking in my shoes, He discovered that God’s clock is not calibrated with mine.

His is on slow time and mine is on the fast track. He never seems to get in a hurry, but I stay in a hurry. As we edge closer and closer to Christmas, the disease of “hurry sickness” spreads like a huge, invisible plague. It’s almost like we never had an idea that December 25 was crawling into our schedule. Christmas rush has become a Christmas crush that crushes the joy right out of this hallowed day.

When Jesus put on my shoes, He saw the pressure of time first hand. He was informed that Lazarus, his special friend, was ill and perhaps critical. But He didn’t get in a hurry. Two days later, he meanders off to visit his friend in Bethany, but by the time He arrived, his friend Lazarus was dead, buried and his body in the process of decaying. He wasn’t quick enough by our standards, but when he wore my shoes, He also showed us that time is in His hand, and He can redo what lost time has undone.

Don’t worry about the clock, but learn to wait patiently upon God. He is always on time by His clock and never to late.

When God looks at the world walking in my shoes, He will quickly discover that it is difficult to see a purpose for pain when you are being blindsided by it.

Pain is a fact of life. You can’t ignore it or deny it. When God walked in my shoes He saw it, felt it and comforted others who were in it. He didn’t pull a grieving mother aside as she accompanied the dead body of her son to the cemetery and attempt to explain the purpose behind the pain. He didn’t scorn her sorrow or laugh at her loss. He experienced her pain and empathized with her grief.

Jesus is called “a man of sorrow” in Isaiah 53:3. In Heaven, He was a man of sovereignty, a man of supremacy, a man of sufficiency, self sufficient and self existent. But He BECAME a man of sorrow when He wore my shoes. God’s son knew no sin, but he knew all there was to know about sorrow. It is He, then, who will assume the role of drying all tears from our eyes when we get to heaven and whisper, “THERE WILL BE NO MORE SORROW OR PAIN.” (Revelation 21:4)

When God looks at the world walking in my shoes, He realizes that knowing that you are loved is the best treasure of all.

Mark Twain so eloquently declared, “Kindness is a language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see.”

When God wore my shoes, He left footprints of kindness and love on planet earth that time has not been able to erase.

Dr. Robert G. Lee, the eloquent preacher and lover of God, wrote about the treasure of God’s love. He said, “(It) breaks the fetters of slaves, takes the heat out of life’s fierce fever, the pain out of parting, the sting out of death and the gloom out of the grave.”

She was only eight years old and lived in an orphanage in Pennsylvania. She was shy, unattractive and regarded as a problem child. The director of the orphanage was trying to find a way to dispel her from their campus when they saw her writing a letter. Saying nothing to her, they allowed her to complete the task and see what she would do next.

Not surprising to them, she hid the letter and dashed out side and down the driveway to an old tree with roots sprawled out on top of the ground. Quickly she looked around, removed the letter and stuffed it into a crevice in one of the old roots and returned to her room.

Someone on the staff slipped down to the old tree and removed the letter and brought it back to the director. They were sure they would have the goods now to have her expelled, but to their surprise they found this tender note. “To anybody who finds this: I love you.”

That’s what Christ did when He came down here to wear my shoes. He left this little note that everyone needs to understand this Christmas….To anybody who finds this: I love you.

Merry Christmas!

Pastor Jimmy & Bob

Creatures of Habit

Jesus had a lot to do and a short time to do it, but habit had prepared Him for this moment. He had formed a habit over the first 30 years of His life of respecting the Sabbath and finding sanctuary in the synagogue, and He did not break that habit as Calvary began to loom bigger and bigger in His future. His habit kept Him focused, fearless and never fretting for an instant. From His earliest years until now he had developed a habit of · Praying persistently · Trusting God implicitly · Caring for others passionately · Submitting to the will of God completely · Loving God intimately and intensely and · Facing death, even the death on the cross, courageously. It might be good for us to remember that if we forge good habits in our younger years that they will not forsake us in our older years. They are like a cable that we weave day after day in our lives until at last they are difficult if not impossible to break. That is true of bad habits as well as the good ones. Bad habits are like chiggers and cockleburs. They are easy to acquire but difficult to shake off. You may question the theological accuracy of my interpretation of a verse or two in Romans 7, but I must admit that they describe the power of a bad habit as well as a bad taskmaster, Satan. Verses 16-21 declares, “If the power of sin deeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help. I realize that I don’t have what it takes….I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway….something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.” (The Message) Habits are much easier to make than break, and surely all would agree that a bad habit is a ruthless taskmaster. With that being an arguable fact, I would conclude that the best way to break a habit is not to start it in the first place. I understand the frustration of what Paul had to say in the last 2 verses of Romans 7. It reads like this in The Message. “Is there no one who can do anything for me…the answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does…” He is a BAD HABIT BREAKER! First of all, He can and does break the bad habit of fault finding. Fault finding is both contagious and conspicuous. It spreads on contact and can no more be hidden than a giraffe’s long neck at a petting zoo. One little girl took one look at a giraffe and decided she needed to pray about what it looked like, and this is what she said, “Dear God, did you mean for the giraffe to look like that or was it an accident?” Fault finding is no accident. It is a developed habit, and the longer it hangs around the more difficult it is to break. You need the BAD HABIT BREAKER Secondly, He can and does break the bad habit of fabricating falsehoods. I find it ironic that we teach our children to read, say the alphabet and do math, but no child has to attend a special training class on fabricating falsehoods. They learn that on their own and many graduate cum laude. It may look cute in a 3 year old, but it’s sure not laudable and cute in adults. It corrodes character and tarnishes trust. It over crowds prisons and punctures marriages with permanent pain if not divorce. We need the BAD HABIT BREAKER to break the falsehood habit. In most instances, it is the only way out….but there is a way out. Thank God! Number 3, He can and does break the bad habit of fretting over fragile feelings. Getting your feelings hurt and fretting over it is a bad habit that you cater to. Somehow feeling bad is your way of feeling good. Don’t wear your feelings on your sleeves. Stick them under the soles of your feet where few people see them and must go to great pains to reach them. The word is patience. Patience strengthens the spirit, sweetens the temper, stifles anger, subdues pride and bridles the tongue. We need to be tough enough to avoid getting easily upset, but tender enough to be sensitive to others. One man put it like this. “Those who deserve love least need it most.” There’s nothing like a good dose of love to heal hurt feelings. And finally, He can and does break the bad habit of failing to forgive. It is impossible to be mentally and socially healthy when eaten up with an unforgiving spirit, and this toxic habit that must be broken. THE BAD HABIT BREAKER will give you the key of forgiveness that unlocks the door of resentment and the handcuffs of hate. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of self-centeredness. Break the habit today in the name of Jesus. Amen! In The Journey Together, Pastor Jimmy & Bob