Guidelines For Living Devotional

"To be a Christian without prayer," said Martin Luther, "is no more possible than to be alive without breathing."  Yet, so often, we voice words mechanically and perfunctorily, and fail to grasp the meaning behind them.  How often have you prayed, "Our Father who art in heaven..." and repeated a prayer by rote, without even thinking of what you were saying?

Those of you who are familiar with computers are aware of pull-down menus.  When you touch one item, a whole series of possibilities opens up before you.  Such is the way it is with 57 Greek words which, translated into English, constitute a prayer we commonly refer to as The Lord's Prayer.  Each phrase in this dynamic prayer opens powerful vistas of spiritual insight and potential.      

"I've always had a heart for missions and the needy," writes a Guidelines' friend, "and our church does not support Christian missions. Sometimes I don't approve the decisions of the church and how the money is used. A bit extravagant at times.... What is right in God's eyes?"

In his famous sermon on money, John Wesley advised, "Get all you can, save all you can, give all you can."  Today--some 200+ years later--we understand the part about getting all you can, especially without having to work very hard for it. But the saving and giving parts of it are often misunderstood today.

I had just flown into a rather primitive area in Northern Luzon, a tribal area of the Philippines, where Bible translators from Wycliffe had given the New Testament to a group who were reading it for the first time. Along towards evening, men came from the fields and women and children joined their husbands in assembling in the group house to hear the Good News.

There are only three things that you can do with it: 1. Save it; 2. Spend it; and 3. Give it away.  It's money--the most explosive and troublesome issue involving families today. It isn't really how much you have, or how little you have, but what you do with what you have. The handling of money is the #1 problem facing people today. Our problem, simply put, is that we spend far too much, save far too little, and end up with nothing to give.

“Good morning Dr. Sala,” writes a friend of Guidelines, “I have a question to ask you. I am confused about tithing, and I want to be obedient to God’s Word. I understand a tenth is required, and in Malachi 3:10 that it should be brought into the storehouse which I assume means the church. I have been giving half to church and another half [to missions].  Sometimes I don’t approve of the decisions of the church and how the money is used. What is right in God’s eyes?”

There is a mindset today which paralyzes our good intentions and causes our heads to turn from that which is unpleasant and causes us discomfort. It's the mentality that the needs of the world are so great, and our personal ability to make a difference is so tiny and inconsequential, that what we can do to change anything just doesn't count. So, the end result is that we do nothing.

"We took on Goliath!" advertises a small business whose product is overshadowed by a major manufacturer.  The David versus Goliath syndrome means the little guy goes against the giant.  There are times when the little guy goes against the big one and gets flattened like a steamroller does a stray cat.  But what's the real story behind the confrontation of David with Goliath long ago?

Jesus illustrated great truths with human interest stories. One of them involved a wealthy man who turned over his estate to three men, entrusting each with a certain amount of wealth. Today we use dollars, yen, pesos or euros (depending on who has issued the currency) to measure wealth, but in Jesus' day the unit of measurement was a talent.  Our English word for talent is a transliteration of the Greek word, the one Jesus used, which was talanton.  A single talent in Roman days represented the equivalent of a working man's salary for a period of fifteen years.  Thus, a talent represented a lot of money in any currency.