Romancing The Stone - Conclusion
Writer Author Jerry Lee Kay Sr.
Christian Article
:
Christian Living
- Fiction No
MY, MY, MY, I'm gonna say it again, MY!
We live in a society that is all about MY. The yuppie psychologist of our times have sold us a lie and we've bought it. Everything we hear these days is about ourselves, we have become a self pleasing, self centered, name it and claim it, society of, if it feels good it must be right.
Our politicians, our children, and yes even some of our worship in our churches are all about MY. I even hear ministers and singers talk about My ministry! My song, My poem, Will you say Amen?..Dear neighbor the majority of so called Christian people of this nation don't know enough about God or His word to fill up a thimble. A nation that once was a Christian God fearing nation is paying a very high, politically correct price for it!...Now fasten your seat belt and hang on to your pew, cause Poppa gonna preach awhile!
I'm getting the silent treatment from my wife right?, soooo, in my male macho thinking I decided I will take a few days off when I get out of this hospital. I'll buy her some flowers and take her to a nice restaurante and that will set things right with her. Sure enough about a week at home and Poppa Casanova made his move. Hey Baby! look what Poppa got for you, (a dozen red roses) and reservations at a nice French restaurant, ( no it wasn't Jacques in Le Box). WHAM! she started boohooing, I said what in the world is wrong Honey? She said, Poppa you just don't get it, I don't want you to spend money on me, It is you that I want! I don't wanna be tipped and then you go back to the same old thing. I want you!, Not a lot of lip service!...O'Me! the Holy Spirit preached me a sermon right on the spot!....Can I get a witness?
I said, what do you want me to do, give up My ministry? Do you want me to give up My business? Her answer was, " I gave you to God many years ago, because I recognized that calling before we were married, However it is not your ministry. It is the Lords ministry, but you have made it your ministry"... What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? ..My! My! Come on guys, why is it we don't give our spouse credit for being one that hears the voice of the Holy Spirit?
Have we become or maybe we have always been so macho that we think we are the only one that hears God.? She said, "You are killing yourself and God has no part in that!" She said, "God has blessed you with the ability to draw a crowd and preach, folks are being ministered to and born of the Spirit. But you let me tell you something mister! You have become mechanical and I fear you are no longer courting the One that saved you and called you into His ministry!" You are preaching nearly 300 meetings a year, you are letting your business support all that, not taking any offerings for your efforts, I don't see a thing wrong with it. The problem is , your health is failing and you think it is the will of God. You have preached so much you don't even need a bible anymore, when you walk into the pulpit, it just starts rolling out of you. You have become a preaching machine. "I told you I don't want your tips, I want you, and you listen to me Mr. Preacher man, Jesus Christ will settle for no less Himself!"..."You have stopped Romancing the Stone" you have let the sands of a carnal mind creep in, and if your not careful you will let mans version of what a Christian ministry is, take you over, and hell is having a field day with it"..."It seems as though your ministry has become your God"....Can I get a O'Me?
Even though you legalistic folks won't like it because it could be considered out of context, she quoted from Galatians 5 but it sure seemed to fit...."Ye did run well; who did hinder you that ye should not obey the truth? This persuasion cometh not of him that calleth you."
"Something has broken in and interrupted the way your running in the spiritual race." Dear friend to me, these were extremely serious charges and they disturbed me to the depths of my being. Make me angry? No! No! Not angry but it was like throwing cold water in my face. I heard the voice of not only my wife and lover dear neighbor, I also heard the voice of the lover of my soul. The Holy Spirit was using the lips of my wife to get my attention...Can you say Amen?..Numbers 22 records the story of Balaam and his donkey, Sister Mary Frances was my donkey on that day. On one occasion Jesus was asked to tell the crowds that followed Him to be quite. His response was," I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out." God will use whatever means necessary to get our attention..Can you say Amen?
WHEW! Poppa been preaching since I was fifteen years old, and never preached like that! .. I don't know whether to say Amen or O'Me.!
Ever had someone accuse you of "running around like a chicken with its head cut off"? Back on the farm, the quickest, easiest way to do in the chicken chosen for Sunday dinner was to grab the un-suspecting bird by its feet, whack it down on a nearby stump, and with one axe blow, lop off its head. The decapitation was often so fast that the poor chicken's body wouldn't catch on right away to the fact that brain-central was now gone and it was dead. Hence the headless chicken would run frantically and senselessly about for a few seconds before it finally collapsed. We've all had times when we have three day's worth of chores, errands, deadlines, and responsibilities to finish in one day's time. As surely as that axe chop, such a day can transform us into frantically flapping, headless chickens.
But what happens when the headless chicken syndrome begins to be our natural state? Consider the plight of this famous fowl from Fruita, Colorado. In the 1940s, Fruita, Colorado farmer Lloyd Olsen decided he was hungry for chicken soup. So he lopped off the head of a rooster at the base of his skull, leaving as much of the tasty neck as possible. But instead of falling over dead, the rooster fluffed up his feathers over his headless neck and went through the motions of pecking for food...The next morning the rooster was still alive. So Farmer Olsen started putting feed and water directly into Mike's gullet with an eyedropper. When the headless rooster, now named Mike by the town of 6000, was still alive the next week, Olsen took him to University of Utah scientists. After examining him in depth, they concluded that Mike had enough of a brain stem left to live headless. Mike went on the circuit as a sideshow until he choked to death on a corn kernel in an Arizona motel 18 months after his head was chopped off. Mike made it into Life magazine and the Guinesses Book of Records.The truth of the matter is this: for most of us, our stressed-out, multiple-interfaced, super-mom/ super-dad/ super-kid/ super singer/ super preacher lifestyles threatens to turn all of us into perpetual headless chickens...Like Mike, we're out-of-control. Like Mike, we've lost our primary guidance system. And like Mike, the Headless Chicken,..we don't even know it...Amen?
The word carnal will cause a Christian to have a walled eyed fit, so I must be careful how I use the term. The dictionary defines it several ways; of the flesh;..material;..worldly;..etc. etc. Most of the time we think it is about being a hell bound unredeemed son of satan...Amen?
It seems in the case of the Galatians it was the natural man, but it was in the realm of natural emotions. They seem to have been of that temperamental state which corresponds to Christ's words in the parable about seed falling into shallow soil. The seed was received quickly and earnestly, but did not go on to produce a harvest. There are some people who make an enthusiastic start and make quite a stir about it, but then do not go steadily on. These Galatians were like that; they made a tremendous response; they loudly stated their devotion; and then they were very quick to drop out of the race. Paul even made the remark, "(Gal 4:15) Where is then the blessedness ye spake of? for I bear you record, that, if it had been possible, ye would have plucked out your own eyes, and have given them to me. Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth? The Galatians had fallen into a carnal state of mind. Why? Because they lived on their emotions, on their feelings, and these were changeable. This may well be a matter of personality, but in fact something of such a characteristic can be found in most of us. We respond to an appeal, come under the power of a great emotion, and then slack off.
Clearly, if you and I are going to persevere to the end of this race we must have a greater power than that of our natural mind and emotional life. The only hope is that it may be true of us, as of Paul: "The love of Christ constraineth". There is all the difference between the natural and the spiritual in this matter of the energy of love. The word translated 'constraineth' is the same one used when they arrested Jesus, when it says: "the men that held Jesus". So it is that the love of Christ should hold or grip us, conquering our natural mind and emotions by the mighty power of the Spirit. Our feelings come and go. They may be strong at times but they can also grow very weak. If we do not know something of the mighty grip of Christ's love, we will never make it through to the end of this strenuous race. After all it is the love of Christ which makes for the fullness of Christ. If we finally come to that fullness it can only be by the constraint and holding power of His love. "Ye were running well: who did hinder you?" The answer is, "You ran in the strength of your own emotions, you ran as your enthusiastic response to God's call because it affected your feelings for the time." The book of Galatians is devoted to emphasizing the place of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, for He alone can supply the necessary energy of love for us to go on running well.
"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."˜Matthew 6:33.
The Old Testament prophets were constantly stressing the law of divine priorities. I wonder what the Shunamite woman thought when Elijah the prophet applied to her for room and board! She explained that her little store of food was almost gone; there was but a small quantity of meal in the bottom of the barrel and a little oil to mix with it. She was going to do a last baking for herself and her son and then there would be nothing left. But Elijah, the man of God, said, "Make me a cake first." One could imagine her exclaiming, "What, make you a cake first! you a stranger, when I and my son have so little left!" And the answer might well have been, "Yes, it is a question of priorities. Henceforth you are to run a boarding-house for God. Put God first and He will look after you and your needs." So off she went and did as she was bidden, and lo, she had more than enough as long as the famine lasted and the prophet remained as her guest.
She gave God the first place and He in turn honored her faith and saw that she did not come to want. He will never be anyone's debtor. It is just a picture of what He will do for all of us when we give Him the first place in our lives, in other words, when we recognize the importance of divine priorities. Poppa has heard a hundred or more pleas for money using that scripture. But dear friend I am not talking about money here. Our Lord Jesus insisted on this again and again. We too often fail to put first things first, to recognize the importance of honoring God above everything else. We allow all kinds of things to come in to destroy our fellowship with Him. Then wonder why our prayers are not answered and why we miss the blessing of God in our lives. The fault was entirely with us. Christ must have the priority in our lives if we are to be vessels unto honor, sanctified and meet for the Master's use.
Christianity is not just repeating John 3:16 or Acts 16:31; it is yielding the heart and the life to Christ. "For the time is come when judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God?" (I Peter 4:17). We are called to a life of devotedness. "Seek ye first the kingdom of God." Recognize the divine priorities.
What is the real trouble in our country today? Is it not just this, that we have not given God His rightful place in our national life, and so His chastening rod is upon us? We have put money-making and pleasure-seeking first. We have said, "I want to live my own life," and the result has been ruin and disaster. Oh, for a national return to God and His Word, a recognition of the divine priorities!
Put first things first in your life. Give God the priority in your home, in connection with your talents, your service, everything that occupies you. If you thus seek Him first, He guarantees to stand back of you and never let you fall. Recognize the divine priorities and you will enter into a life of blessing such as you have never known before.
I have talked a lot about water wells, and rivers of Living Water in this series. I hope you have been able to pick up on the spiritual side of my offering. Madeleine L'Engle wrote these words, "A drying well will often lead the spirit to the river that flows from the throne of God." Dear friend, When we realize, at some point in life that our own inner resources for dealing with life are running out, that our well is drying up and if we are to survive, at that point, we must find the endless resources ("the river") of God. There's no more kidding ourselves, we can't lick the problem on our own, our well is dry. We either find the river or we die. "A drying well will often lead the spirit to the river that flows from the throne of God."
"Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? hearken diligently unto me, and eat ye that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto me: hear, and your soul shall live; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Behold, thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not, and nations that knew not thee shall run unto thee because of the LORD thy God, and for the Holy One of Israel; for he hath glorified thee. Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off" Isaiah 55....The Living Water is there...It's all about "Romancing the Stone"...Amen!
God Bless You
Poppa
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