Devotional 310310

Dear brothers and sisters,
Good morning. Hope you have a good start for today. Life is full of challenges like occasional stormy weather. We have no way to prevent its coming. We can only prepare well before it comes. This is how the Lord reminded all of us by using the parable of wise and foolish builders (Matt 7:24-28). Unless we prepare well by obeying God’s principles for life, we will suffer devastative lost when storm knocks on our door. San Francisco is learning lessons from both Haiti and Chile. Both countries were stroked by earthquakes, yet Haiti’s devastation was much greater than Chili even though the latter suffered much higher magnitudes of earthquake. The reason is simple, Chili prepared their building to be earthquake proof. Is your life earthquake proof? It is something for you to think about…

The great attraction for distilling Scripture into truths and morals and lessons is simply laziness. The lazy pastor no longer has to bother with the names, the cities, the odd embarrassing details and awkward miracles that refuse to fit into a modern understanding of the good life. Across this land pastors have turned their studies into “stills,” illegal distilleries that extract ideas and morals from the teeming narrative of Scripture. People, of course, love it. They come to get their Mason jar lives filled with pure truth so that they won’t have to deal with either the details of Scripture or the details of their own lives.

Drinking this pure white lightning bypasses the laborious trouble of hoeing the garden, digging potatoes, preparing and cooking meals, eating and digesting. This distilled liquid goes directly to the bloodstream and gives a quick rush of exhilaration. But it is, in fact, poison. We are not constructed biologically or spiritually for ingestion of this 100-proof stuff. We have mental-emotional digestive systems with complicated interconnections that notice and savor an enormous variety of words and sentences, stories and songs, reflectively take them in and assimilate all the vitamins, enzymes. And calories that give us healthy lives.

This is a great reminder for us pastors who are usually too busy to study the Scripture in details. But it also applies to you too. This kind of study exercise should be a daily habit to develop. If we are too quick and rush in looking at a passage without carefully digging out the truth, we will miss a lot of great insight from the Lord. As a matter of fact, it is not really by our careful study to receive insights. It is through interaction with the Lord that we receive insight from Him. After all, our Holy Spirit wants to guide and teach us the truth. But we have no time for Him.

If we are too busy or hasty in approaching the Scripture, we will properly approach life in the same manner. We only take care of the superficial or physical nature of life but not the inner reality of life. That’s why a lot of precious relationships were broken up or wither pre-maturely. We are too eager to arrive to physical intimacy of a relationship without developing the inner closeness with one another. The latter usually takes a long time and commitment to accomplish. In a high tech and fast pace world that we are in, it is getting more difficult to slow down and dig deep in relationship. However, without this process, we will not harvest the fruits of relationship that will last and rewarding.

Love you in according to John 13:34-35,
Lawrence