Guidelines For Living Devotional

Jim Warren, like thousands of other people, believed in God. In fact, he went to church--not every Sunday, but most Sundays. He was good man. He worked hard to support his family. He was faithful to his wife, Ruth, and occasionally took his boys fishing. Jim really didn't need God. He had too many other good things going for him.

How far away is God? Tough question, right? Even pondering an answer brings us a host of other questions. How do you measure distance between us and God--miles or kilometers as we measure distance? Or should we measure distance in terms of light years as scientists measure the distance between us and the heavenly bodies?

One of my memories of growing up was the trip to my grandmother's house, two doors down from Mrs. Schuler's house, where I took piano lessons. Among the pool of memories I will always treasure, is the platter of oatmeal cookies which Grandma always had available. After I married, I asked Grandma for the recipe. "Well," she said, "you take about a cup of oatmeal and a couple tablespoons of this, and a pinch of that" and so forth.

Divide and conquer is not only the modus operandi of warfare, but it is also the strategy of kids who know that if they can play parents against each other, or pit weariness against the single parent, they have won the battle. Our English word discipline comes from a Latin word, discere, which means to know, or, in the broader sense, to discern.

"Do you know the difference between a lawyer and God?" asks a comedian, and when someone says, "No, what?" he responds, "God knows he's not a lawyer." While most folks (excluding you, who are attorneys) may smile at that, a great many people today tend to play god. Struggling over the issue of control, we think that we have to make things happen, and when we can't, we worry. And when we can't change things that we dislike, we become afraid of losing control so we worry all the more and live as though there were no God in the universe, no one to whom we can turn when we have reached our human limits.

When Terry Anderson was taken captive by a guerilla group, little did he realize that he would be enduring what no one should ever be subjected to. Anderson, age 40

at the time, had been the chief Middle East correspondent for the Associated Press.   Soon after he was taken captive, he was given a Bible by his Shiite Muslim captors, and for the duration of his four-and-a-half-years of captivity, he drew strength and hope from the pages of this grand old book.

Everybody these days is subject to stress. Whether you live in Manila, Tokyo, or Los Angeles, you live at a faster pace than at any time in history. It's the traffic, the pressures and stress of life, along with family stress that can cause you to reach the boiling point, and when that happens, you explode. You can refine the expression and say that you are just "letting off steam," but any way you look at it, anger has the best of you. When your temper gets out of hand, you are embarrassed and feel disappointed with yourself because you know you have hurt others. Looking at it from a selfish viewpoint, you not only hurt others, but you hurt yourself and your future as well.

There are times when I wish everybody would get it together and do the same thing everywhere--like pass an international law that all the water faucets in all the world would be standardized--hot water on the left, cold on the right. Red for hot and blue for cold, and that all of them would turn on and off the same way. Do any color combination the United Nations wants! Just do the same thing everywhere.

When Jesus was accused by the Pharisees of casting out demons by the power of the devil, He countered with a question: “If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then,” he asked, “can his kingdom stand?” (Matthew 12:26). As He often did, Jesus had asked a rhetorical question which forced a decision. He followed with another hard-to-answer question, “how can anyone enter a strong man’s house and carry off his possessions unless he first ties up the strong man? Then he can rob his house” (Matthew 12:29). “Bind the strong man,” is another translation.

The difference between an oak and a bonsai--apart from their size--is the root system. Whereas the bonsai may be interesting, perhaps even curiously captivating, it is the oak that has strength which endures the test of time and is there after the fire, the drought, and the storm.