Guidelines For Living Devotional

Have you noticed that invariably when you connect with someone who answers your call on a cell or mobile phone, you immediately ask, "Where are you?" Whether it is your teenager who is checking in with you, your husband who is on a business trip, or a friend you haven't heard from for a while, you want to know where the person is, so instinctively you ask, "Where are you?"  Inversely if you get a call that originates from a friend who calls you on a cell phone, you are asked, "Do you know where I am?" Knowing this establishes an identity and a personal connection.

If you had an opportunity to ask God just one question, what would it be?  Would you ask how old the universe really is—a question that would put to rest once and for all the debate about the age of the Earth?  Possibly.  Or would you ask a theological question—say, about free will versus the sovereign will of God?  

"I am from mainland China," writes a friend of Guidelines who tells how someone introduced him to Jesus Christ.  "Miraculously, I was filled with peace and happiness," he says as he began to study the Bible.  But some of what he read in this book troubled him, especially what Jesus said.  He wrote, "I find it impossible to love my enemy and pray for the person who hates me.  My culture teaches me to pay an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.  But Jesus said, 'Do not resist an evil person.  If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.'"

"An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth! Do the same thing to the other person that he or she first did to you.  It's in the Bible, right?"  If you are saying the right to extract vengeance or to inflict on someone the same injury they inflicted upon you is biblical, I have to say, "No, that's not in the Bible."

Conflicts don't destroy relationships.  It's the refusal to resolve a conflict that eventually causes a relationship to become strained, then broken.  Saying with sincerity and feeling, "I'm sorry; forgive me," can turn a conflict into a learning experience and put a bad situation behind you as you find solid footing and move on, but those words are difficult at best and impossible at worst for many people.

Under Roman law a person who had been condemned had no life of his own, no plans for the future, no personal agenda, He was the living dead. It was only a matter of time as life was measured out by the hours until gruel was shoved under the prison door. With that understanding, something the apostle Paul wrote years ago has powerful implications. To the Romans, he penned these words: "Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).  The living dead suddenly become the dead living!   "No condemnation?" cries the prisoner. "Do you mean, 'I'm free'?"  Can you not imagine the joy as a Roman jailer would respond, "Yes, you're free to leave"?

My friend Wayne Pederson used to sign his letters and e-mails with the words, "Focus forward!"  No more. He's changed the complimentary close to read, "Seize Today!"  He discovered that when he was always focused forward, pushing to reach goals and objectives, he missed a lot of the view on the journey. Here's how he describes it:  "At a meeting I was checking e-mail when the leader asked me a question. I had entirely tuned out of the discussion. Busted! 

Dwight David Eisenhower, the general who became an American President once said, "An atheist is a person who goes to a Notre-Dame-Southern Methodist football game and doesn't care who wins."

Shortly before Boris Yeltsin came to the United States to ask for aid, he attended church, something which politicians occasionally do, especially when the press covers it.  But Yeltsin later told the ITAR-Tass news agency, "I came here today to undergo cleansing...."    What struck me about Yeltsin's actions and his comments was the fact that he is an avowed atheist, at least he says that he is.  But deep down in his heart, is he really?  One does not usually talk about chocolate cake unless you believe that there is a cook in the kitchen.  Nor do you talk about God unless you believe He exists.

Shortly before Boris Yeltsin came to the United States to ask for aid, he attended church, something which politicians occasionally do, especially when the press covers it.  But Yeltsin later told the ITAR-Tass news agency, "I came here today to undergo cleansing...."    What struck me about Yeltsin's actions and his comments was the fact that he is an avowed atheist, at least he says that he is.  But deep down in his heart, is he really?  One does not usually talk about chocolate cake unless you believe that there is a cook in the kitchen.  Nor do you talk about God unless you believe He exists.