Proverbs 30:32 If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth.
Oh Friends, the weather in my area the last few days has been wet and chilly. The damp kind that gets into your bones and makes all the old arthritic joints ache like mad. However, the good news is that the weekend will be bright, hot and sunny. Oh, what did I just hear you say? ‘Praise the Lord for His everlasting goodness to the undeserving children of men!’ Ah Friends, that’s so true! And just like the weather, our individual lives are filled with both good and bad days, both having an important part to play, though we might only appreciate the good ones. Therefore, this Chinese Proverb should stand us all in good stead: ‘Every day cannot be a feast of lanterns.’ And that’s gospel mih people! Everyday can’t be the same. There will be good and bad, boring and exciting. As Job told his doubting wife: ‘What? shall we receive (accept) good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil (accept calamity)?’ (Job 2:10) Certainly not! The important point to note though is that each day, regardless of its quality, we’re growing, maturing, learning more about life, and hopefully learning from our errors and adversity. Mistakes like those described by our Bit. ‘If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up (exalting) thyself, or if thou hast thought (devised) evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth.’ Oh Friends, I believe the Lord wants me to share some personal testimony here. Although I have thought about doing it, I never planned to do it now. But the Sprit just said; ‘Do it now. Now is the right time.’ So like the obedient person I am, (smile) here it is. This past Easter season, on Holy Thursday night, I went to my church around midnight to spend some time in quiet prayer, watching like the disciples did in the garden of Gethsemane. Yes, unlike them, I watched, not slept. (smile) Anyway, the church was dimly lit by candles, with a few people coming and going every hour or so. And mih people, that saying that an empty church has more room for God is certainly true. Just go into an empty church sometime and you’ll see what I mean. There’s a sort of eerie silence, and you’ll feel the peace that exists therein, the serene feeling of God surrounding you. Ah Friends, it sure does wonders for the hurting, troubled soul. I’d surely suggest it for those moments when we can’t make head or tail of our lives and just want a quiet place to relax and get our thoughts and selves together. But getting back to my testimony. When I left the church, I asked myself what I had accomplished, what benefit had I derived from the quiet hour I’d spent in the semi-darkened church, how had the Lord enlightened me? And you won’t believe the answer I got. It was simply: ‘Shut up and listen!’ Yes mih people, that’s what came to my mind. Hn, hn, hn! Obviously I burst out laughing, not so much at the sentiment itself, since like many of us, I do have a tendency to talk more than listen, but at how it was conveyed. Since then I’ve tried to do exactly that; talk less and listen more. But that wasn’t the whole message, as I discovered a couple weeks later while watching Uncle Charles, Charles Stanley on an In Touch telecast. The message that day was Listening To God. And Uncle Charles had barely gotten into the message when I burst out laughing again, because then I realized what the Lord was really trying to say: ‘Shut up and listen to ME!’ Ah Friends, it certainly was a mini-revelation, for I believed that I listened to Him fairly well, but He obviously thought differently. And yuh know what mih people, in the last few weeks I’ve noticed that a strange kind of peace has flooded my soul as I try doing like He said. Misfortune, disappointment and adversity still happen, but now they get to me even less than before. People still say and do negative things, but they wash over me with less anguish. I don’t know if my skin has just gotten thicker, but I’m certainly more relaxed in the face of adversity. And though I usually handle adversity well, I think I’m doing it even better now. Oh Friends, we all know that those words: ‘Shut up and listen,’ can be applied to many of us believers, especially in a society that’s become even more talkative with the evolution of all the communication gadgets out there. We just yap continuously; on the cell phones and computers, texting, tweeting, and all the other ‘ings’ out there. Constant talking is good for the business people because it makes them money, but certainly not for God or us. And sadly, most of what we talk about is insignificant stuff that does absolutely nothing to help our growth. In fact it just lowers our already low standards. As I said yesterday, we’ve become a society of scandal, gossip and rumour mongers. Friends, I don’t care who you are, or what lofty position you hold, there’s only so much sensible stuff that we can talk about, and since so many of us lead simple, humdrum lives, we don’t have much business of our own to talk about, so therefore we talk about other people’s business. But mih people, I think it would serve us all better if we’d accept 3 Canal’s advice: ‘Find yuh own business, and stop minding other people’s!’ That’s a perfect motto for our world today, for so many of us are caught up in other people’s business; their problems, their mistakes, their good and bad fortune, but mostly the bad, since we now take a macabre delight in seeing others fall, that we don’t have time to pay attention to our own that’s slowly going down the drain. Ah Friends, I have to laugh again at how the Spirit led me to give this testimony. But if that’s what the Lord deemed necessary for today’s message, then whom am I to say Him nay? And who says He doesn’t move in mysterious ways eh? ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.’ (Zech.4:6) And He certainly has a wonderful feel for the dramatic. But seriously my brethren, it would do us all a lot of good if we talked less and listened more, both to each other and to our most LOVING, caring and generous God. Our individual lives and our world would definitely benefit from that. So let’s try it nuh: Shut up and Listen! Much LOVE!…the Lord gave us two ears… and only one mouth…so we can listen more than we talk..
Oh Friends, the weather in my area the last few days has been wet and chilly. The damp kind that gets into your bones and makes all the old arthritic joints ache like mad. However, the good news is that the weekend will be bright, hot and sunny. Oh, what did I just hear you say? ‘Praise the Lord for His everlasting goodness to the undeserving children of men!’ Ah Friends, that’s so true! And just like the weather, our individual lives are filled with both good and bad days, both having an important part to play, though we might only appreciate the good ones. Therefore, this Chinese Proverb should stand us all in good stead: ‘Every day cannot be a feast of lanterns.’ And that’s gospel mih people! Everyday can’t be the same. There will be good and bad, boring and exciting. As Job told his doubting wife: ‘What? shall we receive (accept) good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil (accept calamity)?’ (Job 2:10) Certainly not! The important point to note though is that each day, regardless of its quality, we’re growing, maturing, learning more about life, and hopefully learning from our errors and adversity. Mistakes like those described by our Bit. ‘If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up (exalting) thyself, or if thou hast thought (devised) evil, lay thine hand upon thy mouth.’ Oh Friends, I believe the Lord wants me to share some personal testimony here. Although I have thought about doing it, I never planned to do it now. But the Sprit just said; ‘Do it now. Now is the right time.’ So like the obedient person I am, (smile) here it is. This past Easter season, on Holy Thursday night, I went to my church around midnight to spend some time in quiet prayer, watching like the disciples did in the garden of Gethsemane. Yes, unlike them, I watched, not slept. (smile) Anyway, the church was dimly lit by candles, with a few people coming and going every hour or so. And mih people, that saying that an empty church has more room for God is certainly true. Just go into an empty church sometime and you’ll see what I mean. There’s a sort of eerie silence, and you’ll feel the peace that exists therein, the serene feeling of God surrounding you. Ah Friends, it sure does wonders for the hurting, troubled soul. I’d surely suggest it for those moments when we can’t make head or tail of our lives and just want a quiet place to relax and get our thoughts and selves together. But getting back to my testimony. When I left the church, I asked myself what I had accomplished, what benefit had I derived from the quiet hour I’d spent in the semi-darkened church, how had the Lord enlightened me? And you won’t believe the answer I got. It was simply: ‘Shut up and listen!’ Yes mih people, that’s what came to my mind. Hn, hn, hn! Obviously I burst out laughing, not so much at the sentiment itself, since like many of us, I do have a tendency to talk more than listen, but at how it was conveyed. Since then I’ve tried to do exactly that; talk less and listen more. But that wasn’t the whole message, as I discovered a couple weeks later while watching Uncle Charles, Charles Stanley on an In Touch telecast. The message that day was Listening To God. And Uncle Charles had barely gotten into the message when I burst out laughing again, because then I realized what the Lord was really trying to say: ‘Shut up and listen to ME!’ Ah Friends, it certainly was a mini-revelation, for I believed that I listened to Him fairly well, but He obviously thought differently. And yuh know what mih people, in the last few weeks I’ve noticed that a strange kind of peace has flooded my soul as I try doing like He said. Misfortune, disappointment and adversity still happen, but now they get to me even less than before. People still say and do negative things, but they wash over me with less anguish. I don’t know if my skin has just gotten thicker, but I’m certainly more relaxed in the face of adversity. And though I usually handle adversity well, I think I’m doing it even better now. Oh Friends, we all know that those words: ‘Shut up and listen,’ can be applied to many of us believers, especially in a society that’s become even more talkative with the evolution of all the communication gadgets out there. We just yap continuously; on the cell phones and computers, texting, tweeting, and all the other ‘ings’ out there. Constant talking is good for the business people because it makes them money, but certainly not for God or us. And sadly, most of what we talk about is insignificant stuff that does absolutely nothing to help our growth. In fact it just lowers our already low standards. As I said yesterday, we’ve become a society of scandal, gossip and rumour mongers. Friends, I don’t care who you are, or what lofty position you hold, there’s only so much sensible stuff that we can talk about, and since so many of us lead simple, humdrum lives, we don’t have much business of our own to talk about, so therefore we talk about other people’s business. But mih people, I think it would serve us all better if we’d accept 3 Canal’s advice: ‘Find yuh own business, and stop minding other people’s!’ That’s a perfect motto for our world today, for so many of us are caught up in other people’s business; their problems, their mistakes, their good and bad fortune, but mostly the bad, since we now take a macabre delight in seeing others fall, that we don’t have time to pay attention to our own that’s slowly going down the drain. Ah Friends, I have to laugh again at how the Spirit led me to give this testimony. But if that’s what the Lord deemed necessary for today’s message, then whom am I to say Him nay? And who says He doesn’t move in mysterious ways eh? ‘Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts.’ (Zech.4:6) And He certainly has a wonderful feel for the dramatic. But seriously my brethren, it would do us all a lot of good if we talked less and listened more, both to each other and to our most LOVING, caring and generous God. Our individual lives and our world would definitely benefit from that. So let’s try it nuh: Shut up and Listen! Much LOVE!…the Lord gave us two ears… and only one mouth…so we can listen more than we talk..
SCRIP-BITS 