Yesterday I was talking to the young man that cuts the grass in my yard. We had a good conversation. He has his own business of mowing lawns. I found out that he was in the army, a veteran of Iraq. Not only a US Army veteran, but he was in the 101^st Airborne, an infantryman. He also was in Iraq the same time my second son was there the first time. He told me that his squad was in a Humvee and ran over an IED. 2 of the troopers were killed. He was burned over 50% of his body and had shrapnel in him. They medevac’d him out to Germany and finally to Ft. Sam in San Antonio. When he arrived in San Antonio, his wife came to visit him with her boyfriend. He divorced her while he continued to recover. The army eventually retired him from the service. He settled in our area. He met a young widow with 3 young girls. He married her and settled down here. He told me that his oldest girl just graduated from high school. He was so proud of her. He doesn’t need to work because of his retirement. But he said for his own sake and his family, he is working. I teased him and said, yea you got to pay for 3 wedding. We laughed. But he wasn’t going to stop just because things went wrong in his life. He has honor and integrity that comes out of him as he lives his life to the fullest. I am glad I have gotten to know this young man. I just want to shout, hooah.

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Everyone tries to get approval for their lives. Some get a lot and some none at all. But it doesn’t stop us from trying. Unfortunately, I have seen people who don’t get approval make really bad choices. It is ingrained in us to seek out someone who will love or care for our being. When we are children, it is our parents we start out with first. I have seen what not getting approval can do to young lives. Children start out in life perfect. They learn from their parents the lessons hopefully they can use in life. If you want to know what kind of parents a person has, all you have to do is listen and observe the person. As much as people say they aren’t like their parents, they are like their parents. Approval is a good thing. It makes us teachable. And if we are going to survive this world, we need to be teachable. No one knows everything. No one has all the wisdom they need. Or even the ability to put the wisdom into practice. Do you know why doctors practice medicine? It is because that is how they learn to treat people. Everybody wants to be unique. They have ideas that they want to put into practice. You know what is unusual, is that there is nothing new under the sun. What was before will be again. And what is even stranger is that if you go back in that person’s history, you will found an ancestor that has done the same thing. We all seek approval and want to be accepted for who we are. And I only know one person who will accept us as we, faults and all. That is person is the man Christ Jesus. Call upon His name and He will answer you. And He will show you great and mighty things that you don’t know.

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For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. This is a law of Physics for the universe. If you push an object, it will resist being push. And brother I know how to push and to be pushed. When I didn’t get my way, I would push back, verbally, physically and spiritually. Sometimes I would push so hard, it sent ripples into my world. That is when I would cause consequences. I don’t want to harm anyone, but I could get angry and push back. It became stubbornness in my life or you could say I became a jackass. Before I came to the Lord, I had a vile and bitter mouth. It was as sharp as any sword. I could do damage to people and it came so easily. It didn’t make me to popular, but I didn’t care. I was so beat-up and hurt that I was going to take the world with me. It wasn’t until I met someone who just loved me for me. He saw all the hurt and put up with the mouth. His love was a soothing salve for the gapping wounds that I had. I began to see all of the consequences that I was causing. I felt bad that I had done so much damage. I didn’t know if the consequences could be reversed. One of the problems I caused took 15 years to erase. But it was only after I came to the Lord that the consequences in my life began to disappear. God healed my broken heart and helped me to live like I was supposed to. I hardly spoke at all for years because of the trouble I caused. Life and death are in the power of the tongue. Choose wisely what you are going to say. Because your words will live beyond your life.

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Several years ago, my oldest son’s basketball team won the state title. They went to the national tournament in Dayton, Tenn. The whole family went and we stayed for a week. In commemoration of this, we bought a pear tree in Tenn. We planted it in the front yard. It was about 3 ft. tall. The nurserymen graphed a flowering pear to a wild pear. So it would be hardy. The tree was growing. It was about 4 ft. tall, when a drunk women hit our 3 ft. ditch in an SUV. She bounced over our driveway and landed on our pear tree. It broke the tree in half. We nursed it back to health. But the graphed part grew slowly and the wild part put out a new shoot. As the tree grew, we twisted the graphed part to the wild part. The graphed part has just about completely in cased the wild part. It flowers regularly, white flowers all over the tree. Especially flowering after a hard freeze. The Lord reminded me that we are graphed into God’s family. Our wild part becomes part of God’s family, then disappears into the tree. Hopefully never to be seen again. Let God transform you into his image.  Ask Him and He will answer.

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Yesterday I found out that a longtime friend died. This man was instrumental in my life. I should say his family was instrumental in my life. The entire family was raised in the church. His dad was a deacon in a local church. His mother would be considered a force of nature. They were by definition a Christian family. One of the grandsons was missionary. I knew most of the family. The mom was the first person to teach me how to pray for someone. She backed me in a corner and had me pray. All I could say was, “God do something”. And guess what God did. This began my prayer life. The man had a precious wife and 5 wonderful children. The oldest child, junior, went home to Jesus before my friend. He had his ups and downs just like the rest of us. But his life was full. He would walk into a store to buy a hammer and lead all the workers to Jesus. He was an evangelist. People from all over knew and loved him. As I did. At one time he was my pastor. He lived in so many different places and still had a normal family life. I know for myself, my life was enriched by this man and his family. And I know that his family is hurting today. I pray that God will touch his family and give them comfort. As it says in the bible, that there is nothing more precious to God than the death of one His children.

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If we can remember the time in our lives when we were ruled by love and not by violence. It is unfortunate that as we grew, violence became a part of our lives. First from other children, then it came from everywhere as adults. Man learned how to control their surrounding through force. And each time violence was used, we died a little bit at a time. It is such the opposite of who we really are. Even in the bible, it says in Matthew 11:12 “…now the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force.” When they came for Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, they took Him by force. All of Jesus’ life was based upon love. He loved people so much that people saw it when they met Him. Every time anyone came in contact with Jesus, they saw that He loved them unconditionally.it is still the same today. Jesus loves us unconditionally, for God is love. As followers of Christ, we are to become the image and likeness of God. Which means we are love people unconditionally. This is a tall order for man. We would rather acquire everything through force. This way doesn’t open us to the pain of rejection. Jesus suffered rejection to be able to reach man. Yet He still opened His heart and loved us. Jesus knew that the only way to reach man is love them. It has never changed. Love is the only way to live in this and the world to come. And only by the power of God can we even attempt to live that way. By if we do live that way, it will not only change our lives but the lives around us. The reason that we are to love unconditionally is to be change into the image and likeness of God. And when we do, we will see Jesus when He returns for we will be like Him.

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There is a song that has been playing in my head for a few days. The song is “Sunrise, Sunset”. It is from the movie “Fiddler on the Roof”. It is talking about how fast time moves and how each day is finite or set amount of time. When you are young is seems that time has almost stopped. As you get older it seems that time speeds up. It is funny how when I was young I wanted to be older. Then when I was older I wanted to be younger. But as I became older I could do more things faster than when I was young. And as I did more things faster, time moved faster for me. It seems strange that it should be reversed but it isn’t. We are eternal beings but here are this earth our life is finite. Infinite comes later when we cross over on to the other side of life. On the other side there is no time at all. Time was invented by God for the people who live on this earth. So we could see and perceive seasons. As a people we have taken it to the farthest point. There is an atomic clock in Washington, D.C. In Greenwich, England is the starting point of all time on earth. Time has been divided into zones, hours, minutes and seconds. You know what is the strangest thing about all of that is how much time is wasted on nothing. Although we aren’t finite, time is. There is so much time in each of our lives. Then there is no more. Once we use it, it is gone forever. How well have you used time in your life? Have you accomplished the goals you set for yourself or has life gotten in the way? We have a very serious question to answer here on earth. We have just a certain amount of time to answer this question. Once time has ended for us, we can’t answer that question anymore. It will be answered for us. And this could be devastating for us. The question is whether or not we, as an individual, will choose to walk with God. As one of His sons. Choose God and live. You only have so much time to make up your mind.

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In our physical world, there are four dimensions. They are height, depth, width and time. The last one is combined with space to form the spacetime continuum. That is a mouthful. But what is being said is that time has substance. Just like a rock or a brick. We are given by our Creator a certain amount of time, no more and no less. So we have control over our time. We can do what we want with our time. No one else can use it or have it without our consent. No one can take it from us. God gave it to us to use wisely. Then can you tell me why you waste your time trying to replace God with things? One woman told me that she loved a certain football team, that when she went to games she would have a religious experience. Some people love to shop until they drop. Some people love making money. Some people love animals. You can pick a subject or object and you will find people who love it with devotion. I was such a wreck when I came to God. That afterwards, I didn’t want to pursue anything but God. I still don’t. Everything comes to me. If I have a need, the need is met. When I first started with God, I gave my car to a needy family. God sees to it that I am never without transportation. What I am talking about is when we stand before God, will He say, I never knew you, depart from Me or will He says enter into My joy?

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Have you ever felt like you know that you are supposed to do something? You aren’t quite certain what it is. You are willing and waiting to find out what it is. The bible says that all creation groans for the revelation of Jesus Christ. I want this event to happen, but it’s not on my timetable. I was talking to someone yesterday about God’s timetable. I told them that I have had a prayer answered in a blink of an eye and the longest time was 22 years. Yesterday God answered a prayer that took a year. It is all in God’s timing. For years I kept hearing my name being called from a distance. For a long time I didn’t know who it was. When I finally realized that it was God calling. He was calling to me from eternity to come home. I feel that same calling again. But this it is both ways. He is calling me and I am calling Him. You don’t know how much I want to go home. Paul said he was caught between the two. He wanted to go home, but he had to stay to finish his work on this earth. I am as homesick as I have ever been. But God’s work on this earth is needful and is necessary. Like creation, I groan for the revelation of Jesus Christ.

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We spend our entire life trying to cheat death. But in the end it always wins. All of the things we do seem so pointless. Whether you eat right or exercise or take something to lengthen your life, it seems to come to no avail. What is the next magic bullet that someone comes up with to live forever? People go from one thing to the take to accomplish immortality. It is a sad state of affair when people can’t or won’t see what really is in front of them. What is really there is eternity. It is a scary thing when you don’t know what to expect on the other side. The bible says that we are held in bondage all of our lives through the fear of death. Fear is a tormenting spirit. It can drive you crazy and make you do strange things. I was afraid of so many things until I came to know God. Even then God had to work out of me the fear I had developed over my lifetime. What happened then was I became angry at the devil for deceiving me all those years. I hated the idea that I was led by the nose into all kinds of trouble. But what God did was to show me how I could change and become whole again. I knew then that I was going to die, but not today. God gave me opportunity to live my life the way I am supposed too. So I could live my life to the fullest each and every day. God showed me that all the great men and women of God were just ordinary people. Each one of them made a choice to serve God each day of their lives. And what happened was that they lived their lives to the fullest because of God. So their lives became extraordinary. What they left behind wasn’t money or land or property, it was a legacy of a life fill with God, peaceful and righteous. They left it for everyone to see. What will you leave behind?

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