Guidelines For Living Devotional

Forget about climbing Everest or Anapurna, or bicycling through the Sahara Desert.  "God, just help me to get through this day." If that's how you feel, you aren't alone.  You've got lots of company.  But when you really are under a heavy load, frankly you aren't much concerned about the passenger three cars down from you, you want help with your load—now.  That's the way it is in life.

For five generations before her, Wong Su's family had been Christians, but she didn't believe in God.  Living in China, when the turbulence of Communism changed the face of that country, she did what almost all other youths did in the '60's: she joined the Red Guard.  Yet Wong Su also knew that what she was hearing—that there is no God and that Chairman Mao was the one who would meet their needs—wasn't what she had been taught as a child.

Making peace with God is the most important thing you will ever do in life, and it isn't something that you can necessarily put off until five minutes before your encounter with the Almighty.  But the sad thing is that life gets so full of things that we seldom think about the importance of making peace with God until it's too late.

One of the illusions that we live with is that there is always plenty of time later on, so we procrastinate, full of good intentions, thinking that we'll do that later.  Take for example the administrative assistant who worked for many years for the Eastman Kodak Company. She never married.  Her nieces and nephews were very special to her.  When her nephew, Dick, was struggling to get through college and seminary, she sent checks quite often.  He was the son she never had, and when he went overseas as a missionary, her love and respect for him and his lovely wife only increased.

On his sickbed prior to his death, the English preacher, Charles Spurgeon, said, "If you do not wish to be full of regrets when you are forced to lie still, work while you can.  If you desire to make a sickbed as soft as it can be, do not stuff it with mournful reflections that you wasted time when you were in health and strength."  I suppose it is only natural that when you get to the place Spurgeon described, you have some regrets.  You can no longer climb that mountain or swim the lagoon.  Neither can you jump stairs two at a time or run and leap across the meadow.

You are behind a driver who doesn't immediately move when traffic clears, so what do you do? Wait for the car to move? Tap your horn immediately? Or just ignore the driver while your blood pressure climbs 10 points?

If you could see the hand of God in the troubles which confront you, how different would be your response to what is happening in our world today. Do you agree?  Or are you so overwhelmed by what is happening to you personally, that you see no pattern, no evidence of the caring hand of God in your life?

Jesus said, "Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets" (Luke 6:26).  I don't know whether Jesus had old Jeremiah in mind, but there is one thing for sure: In his day Jeremiah never had to worry about people saying many nice things about him.  He was despised, persecuted, and forsaken by friends.

Before his death in 1984, Francis Schaeffer developed what some have called a "theology of disagreement."  Schaeffer never abandoned his position that the true mark of a Christian is the ability to love unconditionally, yet he was also convinced that one cannot really love without hating the opposite of what one loves.

He hated the limelight but was constantly in the news.  He loved the simple life, yet his was often conflicted and confusing.  He preferred the country but had to live in the city.  He felt inadequate as a public spokesman, yet he spent his life confronting world leaders.  His name: Jeremiah.  If you check that name in a dictionary, you will discover that based on the life of a seventh century B.C. prophet in Judah, a Jeremiah is "one who is pessimistic about the present and foresees a calamitous future."