Status Updates From God Isn't In a Hurry

The parable of the prodigal son…

^This boy was lost, and Jesus said, “I am the way.” The boy was ignorant, and Jesus said, “I am the truth.” This boy was dead, and Jesus said, “I am the life.”

How do you come to the Father? Through Jesus Christ!^

^It is a good thing to have the things that money can buy provided we don’t lose the things that money can’t buy.^

^The heart of every problem is still the problem in the heart; and that problem can be solved only by the gospel.^

^I often told the congregations that I pastored that we wanted crowds, not so that we could count people, but because people count.^

^If we don’t build margins into our lives, we will soon find ourselves boxed in, and that box might become a coffin. We need breathing space. We need to forget the timetable occasionally and just live. The violinist knows that he must not keep his bow taut, so he loosens it after each performance. Is it any wonder we produce discord when our lives are stretched day after day to the breaking point?^

^In our zeal to build the church, we may find ourselves tearing down the home.^

^The mark of the successful Christian these days seems to be a full calendar, a weary mind and body, and a lonely family. Without realizing it, we have adopted the pace and standard of the world, and somehow we expect to escape the price that the world is paying—fractured marriages, nervous breakdowns, emotional burnout, and various degrees of depression and inability to cope.^

^We grow in knowledge without growing in grace. Blessed is that pastor or Sunday-school teacher who not only sets an orderly table but also puts some good food on the plates!^

^It has well been said that an opinion is something that you hold, but a conviction is something that holds you. […] Convictions are the compasses of life—they keep us moving in the right direction.^

^The Lord’s Prayer does not begin with “My Father,” but “Our Father.” Even when we pray, we cannot ignore one another.^

^Somebody had said that the local church is like the neighborhood bank—you get nothing out of it until you put something into it.^

^When we parents are careless about our preparations for the Lord’s Day, we are telling our children in a subtle way that going to Sunday school and church and hearing God’s Word are not important matters to us. Father usually makes better preparations for his fishing trips than he does for Sunday services.^

^The parable of the sower makes it clear that fruitfulness of life depends on faithfulness of listening.^

^Sad to say, many church committees are just monitoring conformity, keeping the machinery going and trying to have as few problems as possible. But the absence of problems is often the evidence that nothing is happening. (There are few problems in a cemetery!)^

^Evangelist Billy Sunday used to say that sinners cannot find God for the same reason criminals cannot find policemen: They aren’t looking!^

^William Lyon Phelps, who headed the English department at Yale for many years, used to say that a knowledge of the Bible apart from a college education is more valuable than a college education without a knowledge of the Bible.^

^As Edward Everett Hale once said, “I am only one, but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. And because I cannot do everything I will not refuse to do the something that I can do.”^

Wow, I never thought about how Charles Spurgeon came to be saved…

^we do not take time to meditate on what we have learned. The truth gets into our notebooks (and possibly into our heads), but it never gets to the heart. What digestion is to the body, meditation is to the soul. If you ate nourishing food but never digested it, you would slowly die.^

^What about the use of a devotional book? Never use it as a substitute for your Bible! Read it after you have read God’s Word and let the Spirit give you food from Scripture.^

Wow…I was going to read this before I had read my Bible because this book is overdue. But I felt convicted, so I read my Bible first. Now reading this…it’s not a coincidence

^Corporate worship is only as good as what each person brings to it, and that means each of us must spend time alone with the Lord.^

^Biblical ministry is both timely and timeless.^

^No ministry can afford to become a museum that enshrines the past, but neither can it afford to become a chameleon that spends all its time adjusting to the present.^

^The past is valuable as a rudder to guide us but not as an anchor to drag us back. We must learn from the past, but we must not live in the past.^

^When you look at the difficulties through God, they turn into opportunities, and you see open doors. But when you look at God through the difficulties, you slam the doors shut.^

^”As your days, so shall your strength be” (Deut. 33:25).^

This is the third or fourth time I’ve seen this verse within two weeks…

^I have marveled at how long it took them to create the problem, and yet how quickly they expected the preacher and God to solve it.

I’m sure that medical doctors face the same situation. Many patients have hidden their symptoms for months, perhaps years, and then ask the doctor to give them a pill that will instantly cure them.^

^George Macdonald was right: “In whatever man does without God, he must either fail miserably, or succeed more miserably.”^

^A reputation can be made—or lost—overnight, but it takes years to build character.^

^a bulletin board made me laugh aloud. It said, “Lord, please make me patient—and do it right now.”^