The Plumbline

Man, we sure have seen some nasty stuff lately, haven't we? Between this virus and the viral protests, rampant natural disasters, and destructive fires, things have gotten pretty hairy. I think it is pretty apparent - we live in a world where people just don't seem to fight fair, and not everything is fair in this life. It becomes very apparent in times when disaster strikes - not just that this "unfairness" existed exist all along, but the fierceness of the competition seems to bring out the worst in mankind at times. True enough, it is a dog-eat-dog world out there! That is not a very pleasant thought to me - dogs eating other dogs - but it definitely paints a graphic picture, does it not? What's more, the world just doesn't fight fair. But...as a believer in Christ, we have a different way of fighting our battles! The world is unprincipled. It’s dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn’t fight fair. But we don’t live or fight our battles that way—never h...

The Lord is not slow about keeping His promise as some people think. He is waiting for you. The Lord does not want any person to be punished forever. He wants all people to be sorry for their sins and turn from them. (2 Peter 3:9) I would like us to stop for a moment this morning to think on these words - the Lord is not slow about keeping his promises as some people think. If you promise me something, I am looking out for the fulfillment of that promise. I am eager to see it come to pass - whether it is a promise that is for me, or one for somebody else I care deeply about. If we see a delay in the promise, we might just think God isn't going to bring it to pass, or that he has forgotten us, or even that we might not have heard God right when we stood upon that particular promise. We are like that because we expect the fulfillment to be one way, but God may be coming about it in a totally different way than we expected.  I think I shared this before, but it bears repeating. There ...

Does your 'thinker' always work? Mine doesn't! There are lots of times I'd have to admit I might have totally disengaged my 'thinker' and was acting merely on 'feelings'. Thinking is hard enough when we 'have to' do it, but when we don't feel like investing the time or energy into thinking things through, we usually find we get down the road and don't have what we needed for the journey. Some of us shut off that 'thinking' side of our lives on purpose, while others of us abandon 'thinking' almost without even knowing we have done it. There are things we do by 'instinct' now - like putting on our socks or lacing up our shoes. We don't have to really engage our 'thinkers' to get those tasks done. It has become what most refer to as 'muscle memory' - really showing our 'thinkers' don't have to continuously be engaged in order for us to have purposeful action take place! Good thinking wi...