The Plumbline

A relationship requires cultivation.  In the simplest terms, cultivation involves the things within a relationship which will allow them to grow.  Without cultivation, relationships wither and die.  Too many times we look back over relationships gone astray and wonder where we went wrong.  It may be as simple as looking at the things we used and did to keep it alive!  A farmer has a vast array of tools in his shed he pulls out at various times of the year to complete the various tasks of plowing, tilling, weeding, seeding, and harvesting the fields.  Leave out any of these tools (and I am sure there are probably others, like the fertilizer tool) and the growth will be stunted, or even worse, non-existent.  How silly would it be for the farmer just to decide one day that he was going to go up and down the road with his farm tools, just arbitrarily working on everyone else's fields while neglecting his own? Well, it would be very silly!  Yet, I hav...

If you have ever been to the store, picking up this and that, checking out at the register, and then bringing those bags into the house only to discover you really have forgotten just about everything you were supposed to remember to get while at the store, then you will associate with my next statement. Sometimes our lives get a little carried away by the stuff we see, hear, and smell!  Our senses and emotions direct our attention to things we don't need, or simply are not right for our lives at the moment, in order to entice us to actually pick them up, pay the price for them, and then make them a part of our lives.  Remember this - there is always a price to pay - it may not be a reasonable one, but when we are drawn in by what stimulates our senses or plays on our emotions, we run the risk of paying a price a little too steep for where we are in life at the moment. Don’t for a minute envy careless rebels;   soak yourself in the Fear-of- God — that’s where...

There is much to be learned, more to be incorporated into our lives, and way more to become consistent with in practice than most of us are really attuned to as we go about the business of our day.  I always say it is a good day when I have learned something new.  It might just be a clever way to recycle some object into a newly purposed item for my home or garden, or something more academic which I can use over and over to solve problems.  Either way, as I go about the day "learning" new stuff, whether I choose to use this newly acquired knowledge is entirely my decision.  Just because I get exposed to a truth doesn't mean it sets me free - at least not until I am willing to believe it, act upon it, and stand in it fully.  This is often where we fall short in the realm of moving from just "learning" new stuff into the place of making the stuff we learn impact our daily practical life.  A lot of times, we don't need new truth.  Sometimes we just need ...