Another Man

Ok, here's the deal; my wife is involved with another man. Even worse is the fact that they are trying to do away with me!


She's been spending ALOT of time on line with Dr. Oz. You know the guy; he claims to be a Dr. in real life and plays one on TV. Yeah, he's the one that put subversive ideas into women's heads about nutrition and fruits and nuts and speaking of fruits and nuts, this guy has convinced my wife that I need to be taking vitamins!


Tammy said, "Gary, I got you some vitamins today!" I said, "Ok", but I was thinking tiny little "One a Days" or even better "Chewy Flintstone", but no, and I should have known, she sounded funny when she told me. I opened my pill box to find capsules are large as a healthy cockroach and looking just about as easy to swallow. The "main vitamin" is slightly larger than that and has the consistency of concrete! Get this, there are a total of nine for each day - nine! I wanted to ask her, "When you look at me do you see skin and bones?" Do you have some kind of "spouse anorexia" or something? Do these love handles look fragile to you?


I thought, oh well at nine a day, at least they won't last long, but that's when she said, "I got such a good deal, I got a supply of 500." 500, she be shoving these things up my noe after I dead and cold.


I'm certain, Tammy's obsession with this Dr. Kildare wanna-be, that she's hoping I choke to death during my twice a day ingestion of these pills.


She is obsessed with this man, its "Dr. Oz...This and Dr. Oz. that and Dr. Oz says, and I really don't care what this Wizard says! I can't even talk to her that she's not watching him on her laptop or reading something new that he has written. I said, "Exercise and eating right doesn't help, Jack LaLane just died!" Tammy says, "But he was 96" But I'm sharp, she doesn't fool me, "Well, if he hadn't worked so hard, he might have made 100!"


Even worse, I came home from work the other night; she had dinner waiting for me. I sat down in my recliner and she brought me my plate like she always does, but it's full of salad! I couldn't help but ask, "Do I look like Bugs Bunny? Am I showing signs of carrot withdraw? C'mon!" Do you see how diabolical this is? Tammy just smiled and said, "Eat that and I'll bring you Pasta!" She lied; what she put on my next plate was about the size of a deck of playing cards and I think she called it "natural" lasagna. Let me tell you, there wasn't anything natural about it.


This is the same night she introduced me back to "whole" milk. I had forgotten what real milk tastes like; it was so think that I think it has EVERYTHING in it, including the cow. It even comes in a glass bottle that we are required to rinse out and return for a deposit. This is forward thinking?


Anyway, after my near - fatal tooth brushing episode and my new eating regimen, I am convinced that my wife and Dr. Oz have something going on. I really am happy that she wants me to be healthier, and she wants to eat right, but just in case I die of malnutrition or exertion, you all know the two to blame!

Consider this: Life is the best teacher of living truth.

Life is the best teacher of living truth.

It's been said, "ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS". I may say "I believe in you son!" But if I never give my son the opportunity to fail or succeed. My words become meaningless.

The father has to allow his son become a prodigal before he could see His Heavenly Father bring his boy home again.

Too often the silent message in "Church" as in Business is "YOU DARE NOT FAIL" If you take a Sunday School Class and the kids aren't entertained, you're not going to be asked to sing in the church pageant. You blow a presentation or forget an appointment and many times you will not get a second chance. It ought not be that way in the Kingdom of God or in Life.

But how do we grow, if we never fail? How do we succeed and how do we appreciate that success if we have not first failed? Not a single one of us could learn to walk as adult, as we learned as infants. Do you know why? Because as adult mind stumbling and falling down are too often equated with failure. I heard a remarkable man who had to learn to walk as an adult after a serious illness had crippled him say, "As long as I saw falling as failure, I was stuck in the wheelchair, when I decided that each time I fell I was actually closer to walking, after all walking is just a controlled fall forward, I began to walk!"

What message are you sending your loved ones? Are you lovingly allowing them to strive an to try, even if it means they fail? Are you as willing to love them if they don't succeed as if they do?

The Prodigal Son came home to family and to God and was welcomed with open arms - they threw a party, not because he had squandered all that he had, not because he had stained the family's good name, not because he was once young and foolish and fell in the pits with the pigs, no. They celebrated because he who was once lost had been found, the one who had fallen and fallen and fallen had finally learned to walk and to stand.

FATHER GOD,
WE ALL FAIL, BUT MAY I BE AS B GRACIOUS WITH MY BROTHER AS I DESIRE YOU TO BE WITH ME. MAY MY LOVED ONES ALLOW ME TO BE AS GRACIOUS WITH OTHERS AS THEY DESIRE YOU TO BE WITH THEM. IN JESUS NAME. AMEN!

Jesus' Prayer For You

“I DO NOT PRAY FOR THESE ALONE, BUT ALSO FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN ME THROUGH THEIR WORD; THAT THEY MAY BE ONE, AS YOU, FATHER, ARE IN ME, AND I IN YOU; THAT THEY ALSO MAY BE ONE IN US, THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE THAT YOU SENT ME. AND THE GLORY WHICH YOU GAVE ME I HAVE GIVEN THEM, THAT THEY MAY BE ONE JUST AS WE ARE ONE;” John 17:20-22


If you could ask Jesus to pray for you, what would you ask Him to pray? Perhaps you would ask for wealth or fame or eternal security. Would you ask for health or joy or greater virtue? Jesus is ever-interceding before the Father for you and I, but look at how He prayed, for his disciples, but also all of us who believe in Him through their words;
“I DO NOT PRAY FOR THESE ALONE, BUT ALSO FOR THOSE WHO BELIEVE IN ME THROUGH THEIR WORD; THAT THEY MAY BE ONE, AS YOU, FATHER, ARE IN ME, AND I IN YOU; THAT THEY ALSO MAY BE ONE IN US, THAT THE WORLD MAY BELIEVE THAT YOU SENT ME. AND THE GLORY WHICH YOU GAVE ME I HAVE GIVEN THEM, THAT THEY MAY BE ONE JUST AS WE ARE ONE;”

Dear ones, Christ knows nothing of casual “Sunday Relationships”; His desire, His design is that we share life and that life eternal. How are we to relate to one another? Look at the relationship of His Disciples; they left family, fortune, home and possessions to follow Christ and before He left He ask the Father to make it a permanent relationship and soon baptized them in the Holy Spirit, that the impossible become reality.

I have always seen Church Membership and the Marriage Covenant one and the same. I believe we are to carefully follow God to where we are suppose to be and unless blatant, unrepentant sin akin to adultery enters in we are to do the impossible and having covenanted together, grow there. “What, for the rest of our lives?” What is the Disciples example to us? What is Christ praying here?

Thank God the Holy Trinity cannot strive against itself and fall apart. Is that not the relationship that Christ is praying for us to experience?

He never intended for us to be jumping from place to place, church to church, every time we got our feelings hurt, or we like the worship somewhere else better or the programs “over there” more than where we are. What “programs” did the Disciples enjoy? Do you think Peter was the best Worship Leader in the entire known world? Do you think, for a minute that the Disciples all got along with one another all the time? Apparently not; look at this prayer; “THAT THEY MAY BE ONE, AS YOU FATHER, ARE IN ME, AND I IN YOU”. Christ asks His Father to engraft us into a “Trinity Relationship”; we are to be so tightly knit together that the world cannot see me without seeing you. That is why it is written, “THEY WILL KNOW WE ARE CHRISTIANS BY OUR LOVE”.

God calls us to something more. God calls us to something permanent. God calls us to something impossible, by man; but the only way to continually grow in Him; that we be ONE, even as He and the Father are One. Amen!

AND GOD PUT ALL THINGS UNDER THE AUTHORITY OF CHRIST,

AND HE GAVE HIM THIS AUTHORITY FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CHURCH” EPHESIANS 1:22 NIV

Carefully read this promise of God. God, who is authority over ALL, passed that same authority with Christ. He did it for the believer’s benefit – for you and I who believe.

Let me state the obvious; God has made Christ the head, over all things created for our benefit. If God who created all things is above all things and shares that authority with our Savior for our sakes, what does that mean? Dear brothers, sisters, it means that you and I also stand in the authority of God over every underling that would raise its ugly head to defeat us.

Secondly, God has not shared such put ALL THINGS under the authority of Christ for a building. Isn’t that most of us are think of when we say, “Church”? NO, the church is the living-breathing expression of God in this earth – “The Church” are God’s people; His Redeemed. Christ did not die to have victory over buildings or denominations or name plates. God put all things under the authority of Christ so that nothing should rule over us; all sin is already subjected to His authority, all principalities and powers, every trial tribulation and heart-ache. That is not to say that we will never experience such battles; it does indicate that we have already won those battles as we face them.

Jesus said, “You want what you don't have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous for what others have, and you can't possess it, so you fight and quarrel to take it away from them. And yet the reason you don't have what you want is that you don't ask God for it.” JAMES 4:2

Why is it that you are I are more likely to fight and strain and scheme than to merely turn to the Father who loves us and ask? Dare I say we are crippled by the lack of wisdom and faith? I say wisdom rather than knowledge because most believers understand that God is able to help, but, by our lack of faith, we don’t know how to ask. Our natural initial response is to struggle on our own rather than to turn to the One who has been all authority over Heaven and earth and ask.

Let us, who are the Church look to our Head, who is not the Elders or the Pastor, but is Christ and let us freely ask Him for all that we need. Amen!

GOOD TO KNOW

"HE HAS SHOWERED HIS KINDNESS ON US,

ALONG WITH ALL WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING."

EPHESIANS 1:8 NIV

God is the perfect Father; He showers His children with kindness not because we deserve it, but because He can do nothing else. The unbeliever might say, "but doesn't He issue warnings and corrections; isn't there ugliness in this world all around us?" Of course the answer to all three questions is yes, but the warnings and corrections are born of His unfailing love for us, while the ugliness of this temporal world is born of man's own sin nature, which is born of His independence from God.

It is sin that stains the good intentions of men and women apart from God. Our best intentions our best efforts are meaningless and futile apart from the blessings of God; for example, the parent who refuses to punish the child that they love. That parent often lives to see that child's life destroyed due to the lack of self-control and recklessness at the hands of the enemy who seeks to destroy us all, unless that child should first turn to God who is ever ready to restore him.

Father God's kindness does not come as a trickle or sporadically; He showers us with kindness. His kindness reaches places within us that ourselves cannot even touch, just as a shower of water completely immerses you.

God's kindness alone would be enough and yet God says, "No, there is more . . ." "HE HAS SHOWERED HIS KINDNESS ON US, ALONG WITH ALL WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING."

When God offered Solomon of old the possession of anything in all of His Creation, Solomon chose the wisdom. Wisdom is the knowledge to understand the heart and ways of God. How can creation begin to understand its Creator? We can only begin to understand the heart and the will of God as God Himself grants us that ability. Such understanding makes all life right. The ability to be raised-up above the obstacles that block our view, the troubles that hinder our hearts, the worries that cloud our minds; to begin to understand His ways which are higher than our own, oh dear friend, what a blessing, and that blessing is called wisdom. Don't the "whys" of life help us to understand the "don'ts"?

And while Wisdom allows us to better know our God, Understanding helps us to better know ourselves we can rely upon our mind, but God says our minds have been corrupted by sin: He says we need our minds renewed. We can rely upon our hearts, but He reminds us that our hearts are deceitful above all things; our hearts will lie to us, so where do we find our direction for life? We need Understanding, which comes from God.

Look at the promise we have before us his day. What does God say? What does He promise? "HE HAS SHOWERED HIS KINDNESS ON US, ALONG WITH ALL WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING."

So today let you and I accept these gifts with grateful hearts, let us each one say, "YES LORD, SHOWER ME IN YOUR KINDNESS AND WISDOM AND UNDERSTANDING, THAT I MIGHT LIVE MY LIFE THIS DAY IN A WAY WHICH BRINGS GLORY TO YOU! AMEN!"