Today's Inventory
IF God
loved me enough to have chosen me before the foundation of the world, wanted me
to spend eternity with Him, then I should take inventory and get a few things
straight in my mind (Eph 1:4). Life
and indeed the logistics of the world, controlled by inventory. God help the
man who does not have an inventory, business, investments.
In the
insanity of today's world, the drug addicted-power brokers-politicians-non
conformists who "run the world," we are sinking into the pit of
indifference. Nuclear weapons transported without knowledge-controls, billions
of dollars lost in transport (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_nuclear_weapons_incident)
(http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/308-12/8101-feds-40-billion-iraqi-money-trail-goes-cold). As small boys, we kept up with our marbles.
Older, we kept up with our lunch money. Then, we knew the importance of
inventorying our assets against the sticky fingers of dorm life. Finally, as adults,
the pick-pockets of advertisers, schemers, con artists. (I never knew a con man
I did not like.) Encouragement by the world flesh Devil, leads to defeat IF not
in full control of your senses. God never intended for life to be easy. He
never intended for Christianity to be impossible, just difficult. Most of us
think we can be a Renaissance man, adept at everything. We believe the truly
successful man should be able to hold onto the world with one hand, and God
with the other.
Satan must
spend most of his time laughing, men so gullible, such egos, so stupid. This
writer, like many men, committed to Christ, actually thought he could
"have the best of both world's," the joy of salvation-redemption, the
thrill of personal success-education, military rank, investment security. AND,
one does not have to get down into the sewer-filthiness to know success in any
area of life. God has not called all of us to full time Christian ministry.
Many of those who think they were called to full time Christian service have
proved themselves to be just lazy. Perhaps this is the reason that 1700
ministers leave the ministry every month, ordained-set aside, have all the
social problems of we mere mortals (divorce, bill paying, etc). We all get caught up with doubts and fears,
Satan fills our minds with such, even though we know that many do not know or
want salvation. Elijah must have been disappointed when after God, showing his
omnipotence on Mount Carmel probably thought
it would effect the thinking of Ahab and Jezebel. We know it did not. God knows
who he calls, who he wants, who he will save.
The rubber
meets the road in daily life, making a living, living your faith before
everyone. Perhaps it would be easier for the laymen to live his faith before
others if he wore a Roman collar, rent free parsonage, car allowance, many
suppers-many tasty foods. You take inventory by carefully studying your
humility. You walk of grace and mercy before others. In the believers, constant
spirit of the eternal. Physically and spiritually you must plug in to faith.
The physical world of quantum physics-nanotechnology, economics can be combined
with the spiritual values of faith directed by the eternal God of glory. The
entire world, our physical body, much like our spiritual body, a magnificent electrical
system, frequencies, a power into reaction. Your entire body, including your
nervous system, electrical charges. I am convinced that it is the body that
hosts disease because the immune system can not reject it. This is particularly
true with virus'.
In taking
inventory, one must be concerned with burdens and excess baggage. Satan always
pays off with counterfeit. You create your own reality, looking in the mirror,
you see the reason for most problems.
In taking
inventory, you start when your feet hit the floor in the morning. God told us
to pray that we not enter into temptation. Personally, I believe it just as
important to not put temptation into another one's path. If you do not have a
time of prayer and meditation first thing in the morning, you cheat yourself.
Personally, I have a time of communion, small piece of bread, asking God to
cure me of disease as he has promised (Isaiah
53), AND small sip of wine, thanking him again and again, for being saved
by his precious blood, forgiving my rotten sins, and the sin of the world. His
atonement, taking on himself the sickness and sin of the entire world. Charles
Sheldon wrote a famous book, In His Steps. So important to walk as he
would walk, talk as he would talk, do what he would do. At the end of the day,
inventory, physical and spiritual. Was my secular and spiritual life as well
lived as God would have me live, did I present the best version of myself
everywhere and in every way? True happiness is a good day with God and fellow
man, anxious for another day, to get up and accomplish again.
There are
always sign posts on our way to the bottom, alarm systems in our lives,
physical or spiritual.
A billion
Catholics considered the Apostle Peter as the first Pope of the Catholic
church. Perhaps no better example of what can happen to a man than with him. On
that great day in the garden
of Gesemity, across the
brook Kidron, Jesus took with him brothers James and John (John the youngest of
the disciples, longest living of the disciples), and Peter. Jesus went on
further to pray and asked them to wait and pray. He came back to find them
sleeping. Later, Peter, awoke to find Jesus talking with Moses and Elijah. That
should have been enough to awaken anyone but, later, Peter warmed himself by
the fire of the enemies of Christ, denied Christ three times. We see the reason
for Peter's failure, lack of prayer and following from a distance. Marvelous,
never to be forgotten, Peter, transformed as all disciples who believe in
Jesus, preached the first day of the church, Pentecost, and 3,000 were saved.
The Bible
is a book of inventory. Some saints so loved by God that he could write,
"Of whom the world was not worthy" (Hebrews 11:38).
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