Almost Right

Almost Right

Don’t spare me failure
If it is what is best for me.
Don’t spare me sickness
If it will make me call on Thee.
Don’t spare me loneliness
For I remember Gethsemane.
Don’t spare me anything that you endured for me.

Don’t spare me heartache
You bore a broken heart for me.
Don’t spare me suffering
For I recall your agony
Don’t spare me anything that you endured for me
But give me strength to follow Thee.

Hymn- "Don't Spare Me"

It is easier to offer God a few easy activities

(J.R. Miller)

"My son, give me your heart" Proverbs 23:26

"They first gave themselves to the Lord" 2 Corinthians 8:5

God wants, not so much your work, but you; at least He wants you first--and then your work. Service from hearts which are not really consecrated to God, is not pleasing to Him. We are in danger of forgetting this in our busy, bustling periods. It is easier to offer God a few easy activities--than to give Him our heart. The tendency of the religious life at present is to work and to serve--rather than to love God. So we need to remind ourselves continually, that loving must come before doing and serving. The largest and most noticeable work will find no acceptance with God--if our hearts are not His.

-Grace Gems

            Perhaps man's greatest desire is neutrality. We want something not cold or hot, sour or sweet, neither ugly nor beautiful. But most of all, we want neither right nor wrong. The physical-scientific-spiritual world is not made up that way. I want my surgeon to be right, not almost right. The pilot of the airliner, when I am in a plane, 30,000 feet in the sky to be right, not almost right.

            Modern man, politically correct, compromised, appeasement, everything, almost right. Just enough discrepancy to tell the difference, perhaps offer a complaint. Everything about life was settled in the garden, our first parents. Everything perfect, except God settling his absolutes on one tree, HIS rights. "Don't touch that tree." 

            The great preacher, Dr. R.G Lee, called Christians who are almost right, "stumbling at the foot of the cross."  Most of today's pew warmers, pulpit puppets, (church officials pulling the strings), "think" that the new birth permits the holding on to a few little-choice sins. They want the eternal security of Heaven but are perfectly willing to play around with the conjurers, souccouers or Hell while here on earth. There will be no room for sin in Heaven. "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). The epitome of salvation, the epitome of patriotism, responsibility-satisfaction-joy in accomplishment. Our salvation is a free gift but responsible living is expected of the creature from the creator. Nothing is more evident in scripture after man chose the spirit of death instead of the spirit of life, God expected him to work, sweat, use his God given talents. In my lifetime we have seen the spirit of entitlements-entrapments-entertainment to live selfishly off the goodness of the good earth-the production of other good people. Like a disease, a virus, contagious throughout the world, a TRADEOFF of liberty for security. The socialist-progressive (Democrat party in America, other communist movements in the world), have never realized that the prisoner already has that which they seek (America, largest prison population 2.2 million). (The jailbird, caged animal has the security of his cell-cage). He will be fed, have water, no expenses of any type, totally dependant on others he has traded this for freedom. If those on welfare, sitting in their lazy boy watching ever depreciating trash on their television, free of work having everything furnished to them...housing, food stamps, healthcare, communal type entertainment (tax payer furnished swimming pools, gymnasiums, sight seeing trips, feel good about yourself meetings even government grants for any type study), what does Heaven have to offer? With liberation theology, emerging mega-church cynisicym-"sermonettes" for "Christianettes", your votes bought and paid for, who would want to hear about patriots of a democracy, builders of empires, saints who carried- proudly proclaimed God's word (of whom the earth was not worthy (Hebrews 11:38)), and even heterosexual ancestors who produced families, declared love for God, family, country?

            We know that the family of Karl Marx (communist manifesto) almost starved to death in London while he studied at the library. The purveyors of symbiosis (one animal-insect living off another) academics, politicians who do not want to get their hands dirty with work have never explained what will happen when you fleece-suck all the money from those who have money, all the sweat from those who are willing to toil, all the encapsulated wealth of the good earth.  "Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you" (John 15:15). Until here, John 15:15, we were all called servants. Now, Jesus, with his father, creator of the universe, burying the wrath of all sin, past, present, future, to the cross, calls us friends. One is not almost a friend, nor almost right, nor almost good. The greatest joy of living is friendship with Jesus.