Live Delivered

Do you know someone who always seems to find a way to see what is not possible?  We must stop believing the impossible.

As a conductor on the Underground Railroad, Harriett Tubman led escaped slaves North to freedom.  One of the songs of the Underground Railroad was the traditional black American Spiritual “Wade in the Water”.  The words of this song are:

 Wade in the water, wade in the water children
Wade in the water,
God's gonna trouble the water.

Recently I was up early in the morning.  I walked outside to get our newspaper.  I hurried as it was a cold morning, and I don’t like cold at all.  So I was quick and purposeful as I stepped outside and into an environment that I don’t like.  Then it came to me. 

How do you discover what is not clear without using what is clearly before you?

Throughout our lives, we will live and listen to a lot of things.  We listen to people–we listen to the media; we listen to teachers; we (or at least some of us, unfortunately) listen to the noise of social media–in a way you are listening to me right now.  But we need to be very careful about who we listen to. 

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. “A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.  “It is a terrible fight between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, lies, pride, superiority, and ego.” He went on, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, humility, kindness, goodness, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith – oh and did I say Love. The same fight is going on inside you – and inside every other person, too.”  The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf will win?”  The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”

In the movie The Color Purple they sing the song “God is trying to tell you something”.  It is a classic song that speaks to the lengths God will go to speak to us.  In a way He must go to great lengths to talk to us because we will often go to great lengths to miss what He tries to say to us.

There are many ways believers act no differently from the nonbeliever, but there is one way that is particularly bothersome.  The nonbeliever doesn’t believe in the Lord, so he thinks he must make it on his own.  Then there are believers who know the Lord, but they act as if they must make it in life on their own.  Both fail to realize that the Lord is a heavenly father Who is interested in helping us live successfully here on earth as we are given to serving Him.

Today my message is about the genealogy of you.  But unlike the many ancestry tools we have today that are supposed to take a sample of your DNA and trace your beginnings back to someone or some people, the question we are asking is in whose life can we trace  your future?