Hope you are well on this beautiful day!
As you may know, I have a part-time job at the Target Center. The Target Center is a major event venue in Minneapolis. It's the home of The Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx and the scene for may concerts and seminars. I worked Friday night and Saturday morning.
The speaker was Beth Moore (www.bethmoore.org) a minister from Houston, Texas. She is insightful, relevant, and funny. God is so good to me! Friday night I worked on the floor. Which means that I was able to experience the praise and worship and sit and listen to the whole evening.
Her topic was "Between a Rock and a Hard Place". She took her text from Hebrews 12:11-17. (This from the message translation)
4-11 In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don't feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as his children?
My dear child, don't shrug off God's discipline,
but don't be crushed by it either.
It's the child he loves that he disciplines;
the child he embraces, he also corrects.
God is educating you; that's why you must never drop out. He's treating you as dear children. This trouble you're in isn't punishment; it's training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God's training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God's holy best. At the time, discipline isn't much fun. It always feels like it's going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it's the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.
12-13 So don't sit around on your hands! No more dragging your feet! Clear the path for long-distance runners so no one will trip and fall, so no one will step in a hole and sprain an ankle. Help each other out. And run for it!
As you may know, I have a part-time job at the Target Center. The Target Center is a major event venue in Minneapolis. It's the home of The Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx and the scene for may concerts and seminars. I worked Friday night and Saturday morning.
The speaker was Beth Moore (www.bethmoore.org) a minister from Houston, Texas. She is insightful, relevant, and funny. God is so good to me! Friday night I worked on the floor. Which means that I was able to experience the praise and worship and sit and listen to the whole evening.
Her topic was "Between a Rock and a Hard Place". She took her text from Hebrews 12:11-17. (This from the message translation)
4-11 In this all-out match against sin, others have suffered far worse than you, to say nothing of what Jesus went through—all that bloodshed! So don't feel sorry for yourselves. Or have you forgotten how good parents treat children, and that God regards you as his children?
My dear child, don't shrug off God's discipline,
but don't be crushed by it either.
It's the child he loves that he disciplines;
the child he embraces, he also corrects.
God is educating you; that's why you must never drop out. He's treating you as dear children. This trouble you're in isn't punishment; it's training, the normal experience of children. Only irresponsible parents leave children to fend for themselves. Would you prefer an irresponsible God? We respect our own parents for training and not spoiling us, so why not embrace God's training so we can truly live? While we were children, our parents did what seemed best to them. But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God's holy best. At the time, discipline isn't much fun. It always feels like it's going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it's the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God.
12-13 So don't sit around on your hands! No more dragging your feet! Clear the path for long-distance runners so no one will trip and fall, so no one will step in a hole and sprain an ankle. Help each other out. And run for it!
The basic point was sometimes we get ourselves into hard places through disobedience. Oh, don't get me wrong, we're not out dealing drugs and killing people, but perhaps some little bit of unforgiveness is popping up, perhaps we haven't obeyed an instruction from the Lord, maybe we have disrespected our leaders, perhaps we are angry with the Lord about how something turned out. There can be many ways that we have missed it and GOD, the good father disciplines us.
Beth Moore referenced the book, Between a Rock and a Hard Place. She didn't recommend you go out and get it but she thought it was a good example to use in this example. The author of the book is an avid hiker and explorer. He mentions that his mother constantly warned him not to go out without letting someone know where he was. He didn't listen and went exploring one day. He was exploring a deep narrow ravine when a extremely large boulder rolled down and pinned him to the ravine. For days he was without food and water and thought that he would die in that ravine. He eventually used his pocket knife and cut off his own arm to free himself and get out of the ravine.
In Matthew 18:8-9, Jesus warned , "If your hand or your foot gets in the way of God, chop it off and throw it away. You're better off maimed or lame and alive than the proud owners of two hands and two feet, godless in a furnace of eternal fire. And if your eye distracts you from God, pull it out and throw it away. You're better off one-eyed and alive than exercising your twenty-twenty vision from inside the fire of hell. Now she wasn't recommending doing yourself any harm, but she wanted to bring home the point that even if there is something or someone we think we just can live without and that person or thing gets in the way of our obeying GOD it is better to cut that thing out of our lives. Now she also gave a disclaimer, the later part of the Hebrews passage speaks to relationships. Verse 14 says work at getting along with eachother. Don't kick the wrong people to the curb. Listen to GOD. If you are in mortal danger then get out, but don't use the scripture to twist it and get what you want. The example she used was a woman who recieved the Lord after her marriage. As she grew closer to the Lord her husband grew further away from her and the things of GOD. The easy way out, divorce. I have to say I'm totally guilty of this one. Anyway, this woman left that husband and married another. Everything appears to be rosy, but she knows that wasn't the perfect will of God in the situation. Again this woman was not being physically abused. God loves you and he never wants you to be physically abused.
Anyway, back to the point. If we are being disciplined by God, we need to humble ourselves, acknowledge we were wrong and fall on his mercy. And the awesome thing about it God is a good father. And he disicplines us perfectly. He is never abusive. He wants the best for us, "But God is doing what is best for us, training us to live God's holy best. At the time, discipline isn't much fun. It always feels like it's going against the grain. Later, of course, it pays off handsomely, for it's the well-trained who find themselves mature in their relationship with God".
As always, I have so much to relay to you. As I type it seems to be scattered. But if you can get one point out of it I am happy. I love you have an awesome week. GOD loves you and so do I.
Cynthia
