Saturday, May 24, 2008 "The Day the Pools open!"

Saturday, May 24, 2008

"The Day the Pools open!"

First From Julie's Keyboard:

Living From the Mind vs. Living From the Heart

This week I've been blessed to hear some awesome teaching regarding "Staying Full of God." Wow! Isn't that something most Christians would like to know they could be able to do? Well, it has to be possible or He would never have told us to be "filled with HIs Spirit."

In my studies this week, I've been hearing how important it is to place the right value on things. We have to prioritize by the day (or, even by the moment).
Can we really afford to value other relationships, jobs, what people think, etc. above our value for God and His plan for us?

No. We cannot. At least, not if we intend to be full of His presence and focused on His purpose with our lives.

This teaching was all about how to accomplish this. There are some things we can put in place in our lives and reap great spiritual results.

We all know that we need and want His Wisdom abounding in our lives. Yet, maybe many times it seems that we just simply fall short of acting according to His Wisdom in our given situations. Could it be that we possibly are exhibiting conduct that is no different from the non Christian who lives life from their mental reasoning only?

What if we really began to listen to our heart within us? Isn't this where the voice of the Lord is heard in the believer? What if we always chose to follow our heart as opposed to everything we see and hear around us that we consider normal or cultural for our society?

Many years ago (while still a youth) I read a book about a congregation in a small church in IL. It began with one person in that church getting a heart to heart revelation of simply asking this question about her life before she did anything. "What would Jesus do?" She began to practice this and sometimes it involved decisions that seemed quite costly in a sense.

Others in her congregation began to catch on and started practicing this same approach to their Christian life. Needless to say, it turned that place upside down. A great stirring revival broke forth and had far reaching results. The goodness of God just overflowed in that vein of ministry.

You know, some would say "Well, God just decided He wanted to do something at that time. That's all it was. They had nothing to do with it."

No way. I don't agree. Someone decided to take God at His Word and walk in what He told us all to do. He's no Respector of persons. We can be just as wise and just as blessed today as we want to be in Him. He's never changed on us. We decide each day, each moment where we will make our choices from; the head or the heart.

This is not to say He didn't give us a mind to use and use well. But, everything must be filtered by that inner part of man to check his goings.

Bottom line is that our words and actions need to align themselves with God's Word.

How are we doing things today? Are we sensitive to Him or does He have to really use something that caused pain in our lives to get our attention? We could save ourselves so much pain by simply following what our heart prompts us to do. This is great food for thought. We musn't ignore His voice. Simply trust our hearts above our heads.

May you have a super blessed Memorial Day Week!

Proverbs 3:5-8 "Trust in the Lord with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It shall be health to thy navel, and marrow to thy bones."
II Corinthians 10:5 "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;"

Julie

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"The day the Pools Open!"

It’s here again, the day the pools open! What a weekend! River parties with beer and what ever your choice is! Back yard cook outs; camp outs; and of course there’s my favorite; the Memorial day races! Back when I was racing motocross this was the weekend you got to race both Sunday and Monday!

From what I can see around me most every one is no different from me, we just don’t put much thought into what this weekend is all about. It wasn’t until a few years ago I even new the history of Memorial Day.

By definition it is: memorial 1374 (adj.) "preserving the memory of a person or thing;" 1382 (n.) "something by which the memory of a person, thing, or event is preserved, monument," from L.L. memoriale, lit. noun use of neut. of L. memorialis (adj.) "of or belonging to memory," from memoria "memory" . Noun sense of "memorial act, commemoration" is from 1468.

Mr. Webster’s 1828 dictionary defines it as: Memorial

MEMO'RIAL, a. [L.memorialis. See Memory.]
1. Preservative of memory.
There high in air memorial of my name,
Fix the smooth oar, and bid me live to fame.

2. Contained in memory; as memorial possession.
MEMO'RIAL, n. That which preserves the memory of something; any thing that serves to keep in memory. A monument is a memorial of a deceased person, or of an event. The Lord's supper is a memorial of the death and sufferings of Christ.

Churches have names; some as memorials of peace, some of wisdom, some of the Trinity.

1. Any note or hint to assist the memory.

As you can see, the beer parties, races and etc. have nothing to do with what this wonderful weekend represents. I don’t want to be to hard on us, because the freedoms we have that enable us do these wonderful things were bought and paid for with lives of those we are to remember.

I have heard it said, these whom we remember gave it all, the life they had and the life they could have had. You see most of them were just young lads, the lives they gave for us to do these wonderful activities were lives that would never know many of the things they have provided for us.

The joy of a marriage, having children and watching them grow. Building a home and doing all the little things that we'll take for granted this weekend, they forfeited for us so we could.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled
Here once the embattled farmers stood
And fired the shot heard round the world."

That is speaking of the battle of Lexington and Concord, the beginning of America's war for independence. From that day until this, many of our men and women have willingly given their lives for the cause of freedom – in many wars, on many continents, with varying degrees of support from the home land.

After so many giving so much, our society repays their memory, Homosexuality is accepted as simply "an alternative lifestyle." We murder babies that are socially inconvenient. We change marriage partners like a fashion statement. We have abandoned the sanctity of commitments in our families and in our businesses.

Immorality and deceit have come to characterize the highest offices in our land. We have allowed God to be banished from public school classrooms and we have watched as religious expression is constrained under the so called "separation of church and state."

Our mainline media takes pride in forming public opinion rather than informing it, which had been its sacred role in a representative republic. Our culture has disconnected character from destiny. Our entertainments celebrate adultery, fornication, violence, aberrant sexual practices and every imaginable form of evil. We have become the primary exporters of everything that God abhors.

We owe them more than this! I know you can’t read this and hear the tone in which I write, so let me assure you I’m not sitting here writing with a great big finger pointed in your face. My voice is simply a humble and broken voice that is saying, “we owe them more than this.”

This weekend, among our festivities, let us remember:

“Here rest the great and good. Here they repose
After their generous toil. A sacred band,
They take their sleep together, while the year
Comes with its earliest flowers to deck their graves,
And gathers them again as winter frowns.

Theirs is no vulgar sepulcher, - green sods
Are all their monument, and yet it tells
A nobler history than pillared piles
Or the eternal pyramids.

They need
No statue nor inscription to reveal
Their greatness. It is round them, and the joy
With which their children tread the hallowed ground
That holds their venerated bones, the peace
That smiles on all they fought for, and the wealth
That clothes the land they rescued – these, though mute
As feeling ever is when deepest – these
Are monuments more lasting than the fanes
Reared to the kings and demigods of old.

Let these elms
Bend their protecting shadow o’er their graves,
And build with their green roof the only fane,
Where we may gather on this hallowed day
That rose to them in blood, and set in glory.

Here let us meet, while our motionless lips
Give not a sound, and all around is mute
In the deep Sabbath of a heart too full
For words or tears – here let us strew the sod
With the fresh flowers of spring, and make to them
An offering of the plenty Nature gives,
And they have rendered ours – perpetually.”

[Quoted from James G. Percival’s “The Graves of the Patriots,” in Samuel Kettell, Specimens of American Poetry: With Critical and Biographical Notices (Boston: S.G. Goodrich & Co, 1829), Vol. III, pp 46-47.]

May God bless each of you,
David