“She was right that reality can be harsh and that you shut your eyes to it only at your peril because if you do not face up to the enemy in all his dark power, then the enemy will come up from behind some dark day and destroy you while you are facing the other way.” ~Frederick Buechner
Category Archives: Godly Living
Am I wrapped too tight?
I don’t know Jeff Dyer, but I’ve appreciated his sense of humor. Jeff had a web site called www.InHis.com. It was a place where you could find clean jokes and stories. Many times, I’ve taken out my handheld PC and received a smile from what he had there.
But several years ago, the jokes disappeared. Jeff had stopped publishing jokes at inhis.com. Why? He listed three reasons, paraphrased here:
- Lack of time to keep up with technology.
- Lack of joy in keeping it current.
- Unwillingness to continue to subject himself to the judgments of modern-day Pharisees.
Let me read you his exact words in number three:
I am tired of trying to explain myself to the self-appointed, self-righteous guardians of ethics and morality. I have been accused of everything from intentional plagiarism, copyright infringement to un-Christ like attitudes and behavior. I just do not want to fight those battles anymore.
He had printed this third reason in bold.
I am guessing it was not just the straw the broke the camel’s back, but the primary reason he stopped.
Do you know what Jeff’s real problem was? Some of the people who read his site were wrapped a little too tightly. If you have people like that in your life, perhaps this sermon will be of some value.
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Overcoming Our Own Stubbornness…
Human beings tend to resist lots of things.
For example, some people resist wearing seatbelts. They resist it in spite of statistics that say it’s the wise thing to do. They resist even though “It’s the law.” Ivan Segedin was very resistant to wearing a seatbelt. Ivan took his resistance to an extreme. The police had ticketed him 32 times over five years for failing to use his seat belt. Even though this was costing him big money, Ivan refused to buckle up. Finally, instead of obeying the law, he decided to rely on deception. He made a fake seat belt that would hang over his shoulder and make it appear that he was wearing a seat belt when he was not. His trick worked for a while. Then, he had a head-on collision. You know the rest of the story, right? He was thrown forward onto the steering wheel and killed.
Discussing the accident, the coroner described the fake seat belt with these words: “Though his car was fitted with seat belts, an extra belt with a long strap had been knotted above the seat belt on the driver’s side, providing a belt to simply sit over the driver’s shoulder.” Resistance, in Ivan’s case, was futile. Worse – his resistance was fatal.
In our passage today, Jesus addresses the resistance each of us has in reference to him. Click play below to listen to the message.
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