Daily Grit by Wes Thorp

Do I really believe that God's strength is made perfect in my weakness?

I know that I will have a busy week filled with lots of challenges with a pretty long to-do list.  My human frailities and weaknesses could very well be tested.  And this includes more than sneaking an extra swallow of Great Lakes Red.

I love snow!

As I sit on our Lazy Boy couch with my feet up, things seem pretty manageable and doable.  But, I know the quiet of the early morning will be followed by some test and then another one.  These can be big or small.  It could be a bunch of little ones that add up to something big.

I know the limits of my strength for such stuff.  That's where this morning's devotion from Radio Bible Class becomes personally relevant.  It's about how God uses his strength to be made perfect in my weakness.

The text for the devotion is from 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 where the Apostle Paul talks about "three thorns" in his flesh and how he prayed for God to take them away.  Here's what he said:

⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. ¹⁰ That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

It's a strong message and promise.  I need God's help in believing this.  I want my heart to believe and embrace it.  I want this to be part of me.  

 

 

 

My meeting with God about James 4:1-10 and about genealogy of Jesus

Do you read the Bible at the start of your day?  Some other time during the day?

Our Daily Bread devotional

I've found that my day goes better if I start with my focus on God, who He is, what he says, what He has done and what He wants me to do.  This usually means getting up early while the house is quiet and it's dark outside.  My distractions have to be a minimum.

As I move farther into being a senior citizen and march into becoming elderly, I've learned some lessons about doing this.  I've gone through a progression of experience in my prayer life and reading the Bible.

The number one item on my "kinda, sorta bucket list" is building a strong relationship with God.  In the past, I've made lip service to this more or less.  As I see the sands of life move through the hour glass pretty fast, I know that I have to use my time wisely and on items that are important to me.  I know that it all starts and ends with God.  This is one item I need to get right.

My practice for the past year or so is to start my day with my MacBookAir in my lap and a visit to the Radio Bible Class website.  I view this site as one big collection of jumper cables to connect the reader to God and everyday life.  This is a treasure trove.  It's a start point for me.

Today, the Our Daily Bread devotion on the site is based on James 4:1-10.  It's all about

Discover The Word

the  consequences of putting yourself first in what you do, think and say.  My biggest problem, as the devotion writer says, is the one I see when I look in the mirror.  What's the answer?  Putting God first.  That means I need to know what he's thinking, how he helps me get there and what happens when I don't get it done.

The second part to my time with God today centered on the genealogy of Jesus as given in the Bible.  I actually listened to a segment of RBC's Discover The Word which is a daily and short discussion of some chunk of God's Word.  There was five women mentioned in his line of ancestors, both Jews and Gentiles and one is a prostitute.  What does that mean?

It means that son of God comes from a line of people that is inclusive of all ethnic groups, male and female, single and married, rich and poor.  There's hope for everybody.

There's a lot to digest here.  I am not filled with profound and scholarly Biblical insights.  I know that I have to take my eyes off myself and put them on God and that my Savior who gives me hope came to this earth for everybody.

 

Resetting my spiritual compass on a Sunday morning in mid-Michigan

It's Sunday morning and it's about an hour or so before I start getting ready for church.  I find myself in need of resetting my spiritual compass to regain a proper focus on my life and the direction that I was to go.  With everything happening all around, it's easy to get distracted.

To help with that process this morning and many other mornings, I went to the BillyGraham.org website. As a young child, I remember watching his crusades on a small black & white television in our very humble living room.  My mother who faced impossible odds to support us and who worked incredibly hard would stop everything to hear his message.  I know that she found hope in what he had to say.

This morning I watched an online video summary of his ministry as seen after 60 years.  His message has touched people around the world.  I find it like a set of spiritual booster cables attached to the terminals on my soul.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: I'm not afraid of being dead, it's getting dead that bothers me

I'm drawn to people with stories who are facing these bigger than life-sized challenges.  And that's why I added the blog of Pastor Ed Dobson to the blogroll on this blog.  You'll find it by scrolling down in the right margin.Are you facing a bigger than life challenge today?  I think of the people in Marysville, Indiana who lost everything to a tornado over the week.  Their whole town was wiped out.  There are people facing severe health problems with huge suffering and no answers in site.  The list could go on and on.

Pastor Dobson has a nasty, degenerative disease called ALS.  Hearing it described, it sounds like wading through the fires of hell before you die.  He writes about it in his blog.  Now like a lot of blogs, it hasn't been updated in a few months.  But his posts are timeless.  He's a real guy who's facing a disease that can shove you through the door to the dark side.

I found this quote on his blog:

I’m not afraid of being dead. It’s getting dead that bothers me. For me, “getting dead” involves choices about wheelchairs, communication assistance, feeding tubes and breathing assistance. It’s not pleasant when I think of the future. Of course, I try to ignore it but the underlying reality is always there. 

He does share how he deals with this.  It's very real.  He's not always, "Glory Alleulia" and "Onward Christian Soldiers" and "Thank-you God for giving me this disease."  

Even though his blog hasn't been updated in a while, I will keep it in my blogroll as a reminder on facing obstacles.  I've seen a few, but none like his.  Perhaps, others might find it helpful.

 

Starting my morning in Lansing, Michigan with Isaiah 53

My week is just starting and I want to keep a right focus.  That's why I went to the Radio Bible Class website which is actually a collecting point for their various sites filled with biblical devotions and resources.

I landed on their Day of Discovery site which billboards their many video productions and features their most current one on Isaiah 53.  Why does this interest me?  Three biblical scholars sit down in Israel and talk in a very understandable way about how the coming of Jesus was predicted centuries before he came. He was described in a

 

very detailed way, including his physical appearance, what would happen to him and his overall mission.

Why is this important?  Jesus is real. He was then and he's real now.  He offers hope and like everybody else I need all I can get and I need to have the real deal.  This video backstops that with the evidence that comes from Isaiah 53.  So, if you see me walking around Lansing with my head in my iPad, I'm trying to let the meaning of this passage seep into my heart.

Doing this is probably more important than voting this year

I know that our country is in trouble and my first reaction for a solution is to troll through the list of candidates for the answer and this time I'm not finding it.

I found this page at the Billy Graham website asking for people to commit to praying for country and saying that our people have veered away from God and that our problem is one that will be solved only through changed hearts.  

Hearts aren't changed for the better through politics.  That only happens through God.  It posted this Bible verse:

"If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land" (2 Chronicles 7:14, NIV).

This is the answer, I know.  Oh, I'll still vote, but I don't want to get distracted from the source of the real answer.  It's God.  That's the only way we will get real change in this country.

Cinnamon and God on a Monday morning in mid-Michigan

My first stopping point on the web in the morning is usually the Radio Bible Class website where there is a feast of devotional materials about God, the Bible and daily living.  I usually go first to the online version of Our Daily Bread to jumpstart my thoughts about my relationship to God.

Today, it was written by Bill Crowder, one of their regular staffers and writers who wrote today about his love of cinnamon everything and he mentioned how he never gave much thought about where it came from until he ran across the fact that most comes from Sri Lanka.

 

Then he talks about how quite often he fails to think about the source of all the good things in his life.  He talks about his family and how they've been a gift.

This morning I'm reminded of last week when I was asked how many members were in my immediate family.  It started with two and we are now at seven and if I count Latte The Pup, it's eight.  They are verification of James 1:17 where God talks about the source of all good things.

 

Most important thing I could ever share as articulated by Jeff Manion of Ada Bible Church

What do you do when you struggle with your personal identity?

What does this mean?  Maybe you just retired and when from somebody with an important job to being somebody with no job.  Maybe your nest just emptied out and your identity as a parent just took a dramatic shift.  Maybe your health just took a dive after being healthy all your life.

For me, I let myself be defined all my life by having a father who abandoned me and my mother and never came back.  I never even got a hello from him or any kind of acknowledgement ever.  That became a big part of my core identity and greatly affected the way I viewed myself.

Last September, I heard Jeff Manion of Ada Bible Church just down the road from us give a sermon about personal identity.  It helped me reset my internal compass.  Click here for a video link to what he said:

 

 

This guy from North Carolina helps me get my mojo back

For me, it has been hard to sift through all of the stuff happening in modern-day life and in our culture. I found my enthusiasm for the future slipping away drip by drip by drip.  This guy from North Carolina has helped me reset my compass to the true north. My son-in-law is from North Carolina and he's a pastor and a pretty neat guy.  But this is a different fellow.  Watch this short video clip where he lays it out clearly.  Thank-you God for Billy Graham.

Trying to take yesterday's sermon on Zechariah and Elizabeth into my week

I pray that God will help me take what I learned from yesterday's sermon at Ada Bible Church into my week.  I find it easy to get distracted during the week and let sermons get set aside and ignored.

The sermon was based on the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth from Luke 1.  Are you familiar with it?  I've probably heard it a few hundred times over the years.  It seems like it's part of the Christmas ritual.  Kids' Christmas programs have the story and it's read during church services at this time of the year.

It revolves around an old couple where the man is a priest in the temple and who has to exercise those from time to time.  They were older.  According to our pastor, Jeff Manion, they were probably around 65, not old, just older.  They with chidless, a situation in those times which was looked down on and put them in a position of shame.  Their prayer, apparently, was for children.

While on duty in the temple, the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah and told him that their prayers had been heard and answered by God.  Being 65 years old myself, I could understand his reaction to the angel who said that he and his wife would have a child.  And, it would not be just any child, but the one who would prepare the world for the coming of Jesus Christ.  Think about this.

They prayed for a child and at the beginning of their senior citizen years, God says "okay" and gave them John the Baptist as their child.

So what?  What does that mean to me?  That's what I will be thinking about and meditating on between now and next Sunday.  Our church has two inside pages of their bulletin called Beyond The Weekend to help personalize the sermon and to help make it more real to those who hear it.

One of the first questions it raises is "what prayer have you been waiting for God to answer and how long have you been waiting?  This story shows that God responds to people who wait and that he makes good on his promises.

I'm working on this.  I've got six days to work this over in my heart.

Do you feel like you're too broken for God to use you?

It's easy to feel like you're broken in too many pieces for God to use you for anything.  Can anybody relate?  Listen to this testimony from an Indian singer during a Franklin Graham rally in that country.  Pretty powerful.

 

Listening to news about Satan on a Sunday morning in Michigan

Do you ever think much about Satan or whatever you call him, the Devil, Lucifer?

Has he ever touched your thinking about life and about your relationship to God? 

That's the topic of today's devotion in Our Daily Bread.  Pastor Joe Stowell writes about how Satan is the father of lies about anything that can make us doubt God.

Has that ever happened to me?  I'm thinking about it as I get ready for church.  I know that God's Word is the only effective weapon against Satan.

 

Can you be lukewarm and still be a Christian?

As I get ready for church this morning, I watched this video with Francis Chan, the author of Crazy Love, who raises the question about what the Bible says about being a lukewarm Christian, a person going through the motions, but hasn't had a heart change.  This is thought-provoking.  I have to watch it again.

I'm still processing yesterday's sermon about the church at Smyrna-- #7churches

Yesterday at Ada Bible Church, super-wife and I heard a great sermon from Rev. 2:8-11 about the ancient church at Smyrna located in what is modern-day Turkey.  It was one of the seven churches in that part of the world to receive a letter evaluating their ministry and their fealty to Jesus Christ.

What we heard was a down-to-earth, very relevant to contemporary life sermon that contains ammunition for dealing with the sometimes crushing circumstances of everyday life.  

Pastor Jeff Manion carefully explained the historical background of that particular church and how its members faced crushing persecution that made their life seem impossible.

Two points from the sermon:  1)  Don't be afraid and 2) Be faithful.  That was the encouragement that Jesus gave to church member at Smyrna.  And as Manion pointed out the power to do this comes from good news of the Gospel.  

I'm processing all this and trying to make it part of my life.

I invite you to view this.  Listen to what he has to say from the Bible.  Does it resonate with you?  Is there an answer here that makes sense?  

Getting ready for church on this Sunday morning late in August

The above picture was taken by my son Justin Thorp.  It has to be in front of a tavern.  Right?

I'm waiting in line to use the shower in our busy little household as we get ready to go to church.  It's a perfect time for me to get my head and heart in a right place where I am ready to meet God and fill up my internal hope tank for another week.  I find it too easy to breeze into church, get a cup of coffee, sit down and let it happen.

I know that I need to position myself to be open to God and his love.  I have to be ready to receive it.  Here's a couple of the things I've been reading to help me with that this morning:

• Oswald Chambers from his devotional book My Utmost for His Highest writes about being Christ aware, rather than self-aware.  I find it too easy to focus on circumstance of the present whether in politics or in the culture before I focus and be more aware of Jesus Christ and who he is, what he has done and continues to do.
• From the Twitter and Facebook feed of David Maier, president of the Michigan District of the Lutheran Church of the Missouri Synod who sent this tweet this morning:

• Maier shares a serious and very important point.  I need to live more intentionally, particularly as I more firmly enter my senior citizen years.  The clock is running on my life and I need to make each moment count.  It' easy to get distracted.

It's my turn in the shower and then off to church.

 

Sermon today: My notes about "demon man" from Mark 5:1-20 and God's mercy

What should you get out of reading the story of the demon-possessed man in Mark 5:1-20 who slept in caverns with dead people and who demonstrated his condition by screaming crazily and by cutting himself?

This was the text of the sermon today at Ada Bible Church where we attend and it's part of a summer series entitled Simply Jesus which digs into many of the things Jesus said and did and to apply what we learn to our everyday life.

I've either heard or read this story of this man that Jesus encountered after sailing with his disciples from Capernaum across the Sea of Galilee to the area of the Gerasenes.  They were met by this mad man.  Even though I've been exposed to this story all my adult life, I have never had it applied to my everyday, mid-Michigan life.  

I guess my focus was on the wrong person, the demon-possessed man and not on the mercy of Jesus. The man ran to Jesus and knelt down.  The demons inside the man resisted but Jesus was more powerful and restored this man to sanity and clear-thinking.  

The story is about the power and holiness of Jesus and his mercy in the life of this man and his mercy in my everyday life.  Do I have a "mercy story" in my life?  Have I tapped into his mercy as the sands of my life pass through the hour glass?

Yes and yes.  I've been thinking about this story and its relevance to me all day.  This story is assurance that if I receive what God is offering me then I will be okay regardless of what happens.  

What else?  I'm going to follow the Beyond the Weekend exercises in the church bulletin for today's sermon and I want to meditate on it much more.  His mercy is what gives me true hope and I don't want to take my focus off that.

Josh McDowell speaks tonight on why most young people have abandoned the church

Josh McDowell is 71-years-old and a Christian-speaker to young people and tonight, he's speaking at the Billy Graham Center-the Cove-about why 80 percent of our youth have abandoned the church.  Tonight at 7:15 p.m., you can watch him tell why by clicking on this link to be live-streamed to his presentation.  He said in an interview: 

Q: You and Sean will be teaching at The Cove in mid-July on “Unshakable Truth, Relevant Faith.” What will be the take-away value of your seminar?

A: Young people are alarmingly walking away from the church in droves. Probably 80 percent.

I believe by accident we not only discovered why, but historically we’ve discovered the answer. We can’t take credit for this, it was by accident—because one man, 1,900 years ago, had the solution.

What Sean and I will do is paint historically what the answer is, and every parent and grandparent at the seminar will sit up and say, “This is what we’ve got to pass on to our children and grandkids.”

Is it inevitable that trouble will invade your life in some way, shape or fashion?

It's still pretty early on Sunday morning and I've pulled out my online Bible and my online copy of Our Daily Bread and I'm trying to connect with God to help me get started off on the right foot.

Written by Joe Stowell, the president of Cornerstone University and former head of Moody Bible Institute, the devotion is about how experiencing trouble is just a part of life.  Stuff happens.  He writes:

Inevitably, trouble will invade our lives: A bad report from a medical test, the betrayal of a trusted friend, a child who rejects us, or a spouse who leaves us. The list of possibilities is long, but there are only two options: forge ahead on our own, or turn to God.

His basis from the Bible is Numbers 13:25–14:9 where the children of Israel finally leave Egypt and get close to the promised land and have their heads turned by giants.  What's the answer?  Look at Numbers 14:9.  God is with us.  It says:

⁹ Only do not rebel against the LORD. And do not be afraid of the people of the land, because we will devour them. Their protection is gone, but the LORD is with us. Do not be afraid of them.”

My prayer today:  God give me the grace today to trust you in everything, every circumstance, every challenge, everything.

Why don't parents name more of their kids Gideon?

As part of my process for powering-up for the day, I usually read the devotion from Our Daily Bread by Radio Bible Class.  I usually read it on their website with a paper copy nearby just in case I need a back-up.  For me, it's kind of like hooking up jumper cables to my heart so I get pointed in the right direction as the day gets going.

Today's devotion from ODB is about a guy from the Bible named Gideon who faced major leage fear when God told him to deliver Israel from its enemy Midian.  With his overwhelming fear, he was obedient and he was successful over a period of time.

So what does that mean for us today?

"We too may doubt our own abilities and potential. But let us never doubt what God can do with us when we trust and obey Him. Gideon’s God is the same God who will help us accomplish all that He asks us to do."

I ask God to make it clear what he wants me to do today and that I trust him to help me get it done.

Gideon is my role model today.  So, why don't more parents name their sons Gideon?

Thanks to Wayne Brown of Grace Church in Destin, Florida for this Francis Chan quote

I just found this from my Facebook friend Wayne Brown, the youth pastor at Grace Lutheran Church in Destin, Florida.  It's a quote from Pastor Francis Chan and it speaks to me right now:

It is true that God may have called you to be exactly where you are. But, it is absolutely vital to grasp that he didn’t call you there so you could settle in and live your life in comfort and superficial peace. - Francis Chan