Guidelines For Living Devotional

She was not a skeptic or an agnostic...neither was she looking for an argument.  The question came from a cultured, refined woman who asked in sincerity, "Dr. Sala, what is a Christian?"  Strangely enough, if you ask the question of twenty different individuals as I have done, you would probably come up with twenty different answers.  Often when someone answers that question, "What is a Christian?" they describe certain activities that are associated with the Christian life.

There are very few things in the world which can accurately be described as unshakable, or unmovable. Today we can dynamite them, blast them into oblivion, or if they are immaterial, we apply pressure to get something or someone to change. There is no such thing as an immovable object meeting an irresistible force. So when something is described as unshakable or unmovable, you had better pay attention.

It doesn't take long for anyone who reads the Bible to learn that God has made special promises to His own, no matter when or where they live.  To Jacob, who was fleeing for his life, having stolen his brother's inheritance, God said, "I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you" (Genesis 28:15).

Have you noticed that invariably when you connect with someone who answers your call on a cell 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.

"Dear Dr. Sala," wrote an eight-year-old friend, "Is Jesus and God a Christian, or don't they have to be one because they're the God?"  Out of the mouths of babes come some of the most profound issues.  Were Jesus and God "Christians" or "don't they have to be one?"  Our eight-year-old friend is doing some serious thinking, and to be honest with you, that's a tough question to answer, but let me see what I can do.  Let's begin by identifying what "God" we are talking about.  Sometimes we use language and assume that everybody understands, when in reality they are talking about something entirely different. 

In 1975 Raymond Moody, a medical doctor, published a book entitled Life After Life.   It chronicled the experiences of 150 people who died, or were near-death and then came back.  Moody was the first to use the expression "near death experience" and he tells how these experiences forever changed the lives of the people who had them.  In some cases, as death approached, individuals had flashbacks, going back to childhood.  In some cases, they saw Jesus standing in the shadows.  Some saw light—a brilliant, vivid light which they believed was God—at the end of a long, dark tunnel.  But no matter how the experiences differed, their lives changed.  They became "more altruistic, less materialistic, and more loving."

When Jesus was crucified, one of the thieves put to death with Him cried out, "Lord, remember me when you come into your kingdom!"  And Jesus responded, "Today you shall be with me in Paradise."  But scores of people are not sure that they can apply that to their personal lives.  Are they to believe that when God's child draws his last breath here on Earth, his next one is going to be drawn in heaven?

Want to put stress into perspective? Then Guideline #1:  Get God's perspective.

            Guideline #2:  Let your relationship with Him be an anchor or a gyroscope which holds the ship of your life steady. Hebrews 6:9 speaks of faith as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast. A boat without an anchor drifts with the winds and tide, and so do individuals who don't have anything lasting to hold them steady in the face of stress.

Articles on stress and how to cope with it have proliferated like weeds in an unkept garden. And having read them, most people are about as satisfied as the farmer's son who has to pull the weeds out of the garden.  Like a mother's kiss on a child's skinned knee, they may help some, but often their uplift is temporary, more like a desensitizer than a real cure.

If you have ever been tempted to think that Christians should not face stress, ponder the stress that some of the heroes of the Bible faced.  Consider Daniel in the lion's den. If God doesn't bring deliverance, he's on the menu for breakfast the next morning--which would have been "terminal stress." Think of Esther, the young woman who risked her life going before King Xerxes. "If I perish, I perish!" she cried. Yes, she knew what stress is. Then there is Joseph, falsely convicted of sexual assault, unjustly thrown in prison and seemingly forgotten by God because of his moral uprightness.  Don't think that Joseph was a stranger to stress.