A daily devotional walking through God’s word together using The Bible Reading Plan at http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

Today my devotions took me to the book of Esther. A fascinating story that never mentions the name of God. You can certainly see the hand of God throughout the story, but his name is not mentioned. I’ve heard and preached many sermons on the sage pronouncement Mordecai gives to his niece, Queen to King Xerxes. He says to her, “Who knows but you were made queen for just such a time as this.”

Esther was the only person in a position to stop the massacre of the Jewish people after Haman, a prince in the nation, convinced the king to destroy every Jew across the land because of his personal hatred of the race.

But today I’d like to talk about something a little different than the usual sermon topic in the book of Esther. I’d like to exam the character of the king and Haman. We see people like them everywhere today. As a matter of fact, their character types plague us today when you begin to explore who they really are and their roles in the drama that played out in the first few chapters of the story.

First, let’s look at Haman. Here was a political figure who had it all. He climbed the ladder of success to become an advisor to the king. Few could just walk into the throne room without a personal invitation, but Haman could. He was special in the kingdom. The king could trust few people with his signet ring to make proclamations in his name, but Haman held that kind of trust.

People bowed to Haman just as they bowed to the king. People may not have respected Haman because of the way he gained his position, his power and influence. But people paid homage to him because of those things. He was rich. He was deemed intelligent. He was at the ear of the king in every decision made about the kingdom. And you can be sure every decision the king made was good for Haman before it was good for the kingdom.

Most of the people around the kingdom would like to be like Haman. Rich. Powerful. Prestigious. Standing at the right hand of the king. Almost a god in his own eyes. What a life! Most people longed for a life like Haman’s. Mordecai was not like most people, though. And so Haman hated him. Mordecai was a Jew and bowed to no one except God. He would not even consider bowing to one of God’s creations because God said not to have any gods before him. There was only one God and he was not Haman. So while everyone else bowed when Haman walked by, Mordecai just stood there. Haman despised the man.

But his hatred went a little deeper. He hated every Jew because Mordecai was a Jew. His prejudice showed through his behavior, his emotions, his every action. Haman hated a whole race of people because Mordecai would not bow to him when he went in and out of the gates of the royal palace.

So here’s the point I want to make about Haman. We get the rest of the story about how Haman was humiliated by having to praise Mordecai for a deed he had done several years earlier. We get the part about Queen Esther intervening on behalf of the Jews and saving her people by appealing to the king allowing them to defend themselves against those Haman demanded kill her race. But we’re focusing on Haman.

Did you get the point about Haman hating a whole race because of the actions of one man? Did you see how Mordecai’s refusal to bow to him led him to want to kill every man, woman, and child of Jewish ancestry? Did you see the character flaw in Haman that even if Mordecai harmed him in some way, let him become blind to the good in people and carried his hatred to a whole race instead of focusing his attention on the one who did him wrong?

Now look around the neighborhoods where you live. Do you know any Hamans? Or worse, yet? Do you spread your prejudice to a race of people because of the harm one or two people of one race or another might have done to you in the past? Do you harbor hatred and vengeance in your heart against a whole class of people because of what a few have done?

We see it every year in our election processes here. Democrats against Republicans. Doesn’t matter which side of the aisle you’re on. If you can’t understand that both sides need salvation and both sides need to put God at the head of the party instead of their political leader, our nation is doomed. And guess what. God has disappeared from our political process. The Supreme Court says he must not be mentioned. Something about separation of church and state. Didn’t seem to be a problem for the gentlemen who founded the country, but it is today in our not so Christian nation.

So, do you have a tendency to be like Haman and pour out your negative thoughts and ideology against a race just because? Think about it. God made us all. Everyone who breathes the air around us were made in his image. In fact, Jesus didn’t look like the white guy in most of the paintings we see. Remember he was born in Bethlehem. A community of Jews who lived in Israel. He looked a lot more like the terrorists we see on television every once in a while than he looks like me. Dark haired. Olive skinned. Probably large nosed. Middle eastern. Israeli native. Jew. So what kind of prejudice do you need to overcome when you think about Haman’s hatred of the Jews because of Mordecai.

Well, let’s move on to King Xerxes. What a guy. No one could come into his throne room unless he invited them. If he doesn’t raise his scepter and you walk into the room, his guard immediately run you through with a spear. Great guy. He banished his first queen because she wouldn’t dance in front of a bunch of drunken guests. Yep, put him on the list of folks most likely to invite your next party. Oops, scratch that.

He picks his next wife by sleeping with the most beautiful women in the kingdom and that’s the best criteria he can come up with to find his next queen. He must have spent a lot of time coming up with a good list of things he wanted in his next queen before he started on this quest for the right virgin girl. Right.

Now take a look at his kingdom. He trusts this guy Haman with everything. He probably knows little about his character or he wouldn’t put him in charge. But because King Xerxes doesn’t seem to know anything about being a king, only a bored bully, he lets Haman do whatever he wants and in his boredom, gives him his signet ring and tells him to just go write whatever he wants to get rid of the race that seems to be pestering him. Great analysis went into his decision making, I’m sure.

Even the king’s decision to have Haman hung was pretty flighty when you really look at it. There was no defense. No question. No chance for Haman to tell the king he was pleading with Esther for her help in calming the king and helping him out of this situation. He had no chance to tell the king he didn’t have any untoward feelings for Esther and only touched her couch to beg her forgiveness.

The king flew off the handle. He didn’t stop to think. He didn’t seek any explanation. He assumed he knew what was going on when he really didn’t. He thought he was smart enough to know everything about everything because he was king. So Haman had an immediate trial with the king as judge and jury. Haman had no chance to appeal. He was immediately sentenced to die. King Xerxes needed some anger management classes in the worst way.

Know anyone like that? Know anyone that goes from zero to ten in a flash without thinking? Know anyone that decides the worst about something without really knowing what’s happening? Just flies into a rage because? King Xerxes may have been different in that he had the power of life and death at his fingertips as king, but we can just as easily destroy someone’s life with our words or actions when we act as this king did. We can destroy relationships in a flash when we decide we know everything about a situation when we really know nothing about what is going on and we completely misinterpret the circumstance surrounding us.

The book of Esther has some great lessons for us. All the players teach us monumental truths about how to live or how not to live. Haman and the king certainly give us the negative side. Pay attention to them, though. If we don’t pay attention to history and understand what happened and why, we are bound to repeat it. With the tension abounding in our political processes right now, we need to go back and take a look at our history books. 1860 to 1865 were not good years for us. We don’t need to repeat them, but we are getting really close if we don’t get on our knees and ask for God’s help.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Check out this episode!

A daily devotional walking through God’s word together using The Bible Reading Plan at http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

As I prepare this week’s podcast, I’m also in the throes of preparing for a special Veterans’ Day service at my church. USAF Col(Ret) Thomas “Jerry” Curtis graciously accepted our invitation to speak for us. If you haven’t heard his name before, Carole Engle Avriett wrote the account of his 7 ½ years of captivity as a POW during the Vietnam War. As I read the harrowing story of his capture, imprisonment, and unrelenting torture, I could not imagine the suffering Col Curtis and his fellow prisoners endured.

There is a similar group of individuals who demonstrate that selfless service. Men who stand in the face of danger and demonstrate incredible courage in the face of the enemy. I’ve been extremely fortunate, especially in my later assignments in the service, to meet some of these incredible people. At the Army Medical Department Center and School we often invited Medal of Honor recipients to address classes of young students as they began their new careers. I enjoyed the honor of meeting with most of them in my office for some conversation and a cup of coffee before they spoke to the class. What a privilege!

Invariably, when asked about the event that resulted in their earning of our nation’s highest award, these humble men remarked, “I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I just did what anyone would do. My buddies were in trouble and I did what I had to do.” I always read their citations before I met them and I have to tell you, there are few men who would do what these heroes would do. This collection of 3521 men and one woman (Dr. Mary Walker) are truly outstanding examples of selfless service. Dr. Walker and five other civilians received the award after the Civil War. Not quite half of the Medals came from the Civil War era. Many of the awards were given to next of kin postumously. The service members recieving the awards dieing as a result of their actions to save others.

I was consistently mesmerized by these men’s stories. I was equally mesmerized by Col. Curtis’ story. The courage of the POWs remind me of the selfless sacrifice our veterans and their families make so we can enjoy the freedoms enumerated by our Constitution. It’s easy for us to forget those sacrifices today since less than 1% of our population has any connection to the military these days. They endure the separation from home and family, often living in abysmal conditions in far off lands, to keep war from our shores so that we can sleep peacefully at night.

They also remind me that Jesus and his disciple, Paul and those early Christians knew well the suffering veterans like Col. Curtis and his fellow prisoners endured. Paul was beaten, enslaved, moved from prison to prison. He never knew if he would live or die at the hands of his next jailers. He was cold, hungry, thirsty, lacked basic hygiene we take for granted. He had nothing to call his own. He was ridiculed for his beliefs and told he was nothing. Our POWs, some living in those conditions for almost eight years, endured those same atrocities.

Why do I bring these things up today? A couple of reasons. First, as we celebrate Veterans’ Day, it is a good time to thank a veteran for his or her service. We enjoy what we have today in large part because of their willingness to sacrifice for us. And thank their families because they too sacrifice. While veterans deploy to far off shores, families stay home and wonder what is happening. They worry about their safety. They wonder if they will even make it home again. Spouses act as single parent as often as not. Reunification when service men and women return is never easy either as that service member returns to take their place in the home…changed because of their experiences. Remember families.

Second, as we think about the atrocities that humans can inflict upon other humans, pray that peace can break out in places like the Middle East and the Pacific Rim and Africa. There are dangerous places around the world that put everyone at risk because of the interconnected nature of the world today. There is no such thing as isolationism today. There just isn’t.

Third, remember that as Christians we are soldiers of the cross. Jesus said to expect the world to hate us because of him. Knowing what our military enemies of the past have done to our service men and women and reading the accounts of men like Col. Curtis and the Apostle Paul, I think we can expect similar treatment at the hands of evil me as Jesus’ return gets closer. Pray that we, like those who have gone before us will have the courage to endure to the end. I fear that as we progress toward the final battles that John wrote in the Revelations he penned on the Isle of Patmos we will feel the pain and torture evil men can inflict on others.

Finally, you will find that blessing others is so much more rewarding that complaining about others. Whether talking about politics or work or family or neighbors or any other topic, blessings will go so much further than curses. Just bless those around you. When you read and understand Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, you find again and again his admonishment to treat others well regardless how they treat you. He tells us our behavior show mimick God’s sharing mercy when mercy is not deserved. He says to extend grace when grace is the last thing on our mind as we suffer because of him.

Remember what we mean by grace. We sometimes forget the difference between justice and mercy and grace. I think it important to remember the difference as we extend God’s grace to others. Justice is what we deserve, punishment for our wrong behavior, sin. Justice requires our eternal punishment for our disobedience to God. Mercy says we are forgiven. Because of Jesus’ death on the cross, we can accept his sacrifice as our own, ask forgiveness, follow him, and we experience his mercy. Forgiveness we do not deserve. But grace. Grace is overwhelming. Grace stuns us. Grace makes us fall on our face in awe of God’s indescribable love. He gives more than we deserve, expect, imagine. God gives all he is to us. He sacrificed himself. He became like us to show us who he is.

I’ve shared this story before to describe his grace. You come into the parking lot and see a young thug with keys in his hand standing next to your brand new Lambergini. There are streaks all down the side and flakes of paint still falling to the ground beside it. The young man’s keys are stained with the same paint and his eyes grow big as you approach your car. He’s caught. Trapped. No where to go. He knows your know exactly what has happened.

Justice says you call the police. Justice says the young man pays to have your brand new car repainted. Justice says punishment is coming quickly for this young man caught in the act. But you extend mercy. The young man is afraid. You see it in his eyes as you walk up to him. But mercy says. Young man I forgive you for what you’ve done. You know it was wrong. I know it was wrong. I think you’ve learned your lesson, though. It’s not about being caught. You understand that, right? Now, go about your business, I won’t punish you. I won’t call the police. I won’t make you pay for the damage. You are forgiven. I only ask that you don’t do something like this again. That’s mercy.

But grace. Grace says this. You walk up to the young man who obviously has fear in his eyes. And here’s what happens. “Young man, I see you’ve scratched up my car. I forgive you. It’s only a car, but here are the keys. I want you to have it. I think you know it was wrong and you won’t do something like that again. Let me sign the title over to you. Oh, and let’s go to the body shop and get the scratches fixed. Don’t worry about the cost. I’ll pay for it. The car is yours and I want it to look perfect for you. One more thing. I want you to take this credit card and if you need gas or tires or any kind of maintenance, be sure to charge it to me, okay?” That is grace. Awesome. Unbelievable. Beyond what we can think or imagine. Stunning. That is the grace God give us.

What does Jesus want us to do? Forgive our enemies. Extend his mercy to them. Then love them the way he loves them. Extend his grace to them. Can we do that without knowing him? Not a chance. We cannot understand his grace until we experience it ourselves. And how do we experience it? Ask him into your life and obey him. You will know his grace. He gives it freely to all who let him in.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Check out this episode!

A daily devotional walking through God’s word together using The Bible Reading Plan at http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

Once again in my devotions, I came across an intriguing question. “Why do you need to lose the battle of wills against God?” Maybe you never thought of obedience in those terms before. Maybe you never thought about following God as a battle of wills, but when you really stop and think about it, that’s exactly what we do when we decide to give our lives to him and follow him.

Why would I approach obedience from that perspective, you might ask. We can go back to Genesis 3 for the answer and that same theme follows us all the way to present day humanity. Adam and Eve wanted their way. They wanted their selfish desire to trump God’s rule not to eat from the tree in the center of the Garden of Eden. It might sound like a silly, inconsequential rule to you and me. It was only a single tree in a huge garden full of trees from which they could eat, so what was the big deal?

I think the issue was not so much the particular tree or the type of fruit, but it was the command. It was the willingness to set aside their desires for God’s. It was their willingness to say, “God, I’m going to do what you want, instead of what I want.” It’s really that simple. The same simple formula persists from that first act of disobedience to this very day. It’s a matter of my telling God I want to usurp his will with mine. I want what I want and I’m willing to suffer the consequences for it.

When we really stop and think about that attitude, if we had any brain cells functioning at all, we would realize what a monumental mistake that would be. We are not God. We cannot dictate the consequences of our actions. The laws of physics, the laws that govern the nature of sowing and reaping, the consequences of actions and reactions just happen. God set them in place at his act of creation. He doesn’t need to change them, although sometimes he does intervene and releases us from the consequences of our actions. Not often, but sometimes. So our behaviors reap certain consequences over time just as planting certain seeds will harvest crops of a certain kind and we would not expect any other fruit or vegetable to sprout and grow in its place. I don’t expect to get oranges when I plant apple seeds. I expect apples.

So we know good, God desired actions and behavior, brings about good, God desired consequences, put in place at the beginning of time. We also know that evil actions and behavior will eventually reap those same rewards, evil consequences that we must bear in time. It’s the irrefutable nature of the cause and effects of sowing and reaping. We also recognize that evil begins with my selfish desire and my selfish belief that I know better than God.

From the first encounter with that spirit in opposition to God, Satan, the Devil, Beelzebub, whatever name you want to use to identify him, we have been deceived and convinced that we can exert our will over God’s and come out okay. We can’t. God is still God. Always has been and always will be. We are as nothing in the scope of his creation and yet we are the jewel of his creation. He knows every bird that falls from the sky and takes time to deal with our petty arguments that we use to try to lift ourselves on pedestals higher than his. All ours crumble. His has and will always remain intact.

We try to demand of God. Fix this. Give me that. Take care of this problem. Why don’t you answer this question. Stop this suffering. Make me prosperous so I can give more. Do you see how disgusting we must sound to the maker of the universe? To our creator? How arrogant. How self centered. How stupid we can be. Yet God still loves us. He still wants us to come to him and accept the sacrifice he made for us so we might be forgiven.

Some would say, “God is a loving God and everyone will receive his forgiveness in the end.” I hope for everyone’s sake that is true. My Bible says it is not. God operates with us in covenants. Covenants require participation from both parties to the covenant. God promises certain things, far more than we deserve. And he keeps his promises. But we must also promise certain things and keep our promises. We must follow him. We must set aside our desires for his. We must become his maidservant or manservant. We must usurp our will to his. We must act out of an obedient heart and understand his every command is centered on making us more like him every day. And he never gives up. He never quits molding us and refining us.

I asked for his forgiveness for my sins 58 years ago. I gave myself to him in full commitment to whatever he wanted of me 42 years ago. Yet every day as I read and study his word, I find new challenges to help me become more like him each day. Like Paul, I haven’t arrived yet. I’m still fighting the good fight. One of these days, I’ll be too old and feeble to do much more than pray, but I will be able go do that. And I’m sure Satan will continue to push excuses in my path to try to keep me from doing God’s will. He makes it easy. He wants to destroy us. He wants to move as many as possible away from God’s eternal reward for those who are willing to lose the battle of wills against God.

In our competitive social culture in this day and age, we want to win. We argue and plan and fight expecting to win. We scheme and connive and twist and turn events so we will win. But if we want to see Jesus, we must take a different perspective. In the end, the loser wins. The loser of the battle of wills against God wins. The loser of demands fulfilled wins. The loser of life for God’s sake wins. Jesus came and turned our rules upside down because he knew we didn’t understand the relationship with God our fearsome, most awesome, benevolent, wonderful, creator, savior and friend.

So today, in the battle of wills in your life, who wins? It’s a fascinating question. If God wins, so do you. If you win, you only win when God wins. If God loses, you lose, too. So you lose so you both can win, or you win and you both lose. It is an intriguing question. It’s a good day to lose, I mean win, I mean lose so you can win! I hope you know what I mean. If you want to win, make sure the battle of wills must fall to God…always.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Check out this episode!

A daily devotional walking through God’s word together using The Bible Reading Plan at http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

I ran across this question today in my devotions: If knowing God is the beginning of wisdom, can a person who does not know God be wise?

In today’s culture we would probably get an overwhelming number of responses to that question that answers in the affirmative. The argument would be to look at all the accomplishment we have made as a collection of all mankind’s minds. Certainly, the discoveries we have made, the inventive and creative mind of man, the impressive body of knowledge around us means that we are wise with or without God, right?

It is certainly convenient to think we are as smart as God and we wisdom, but I’m inclined to believe the Book that contains the wisdom of the Ages. Off and on, I have attempted to read one chapter of Proverbs a day each month continuously. I’ll have to admit, I’m not very good at it. There are 31 chapters, so it makes for a good goal to just pick up the book and read today’s chapter and see what it says.

I’m releasing this podcast on Monday, November 5th. That chapter in Proverbs gives warning from a father to his son concerning adultery. Nothing good comes from it. In fact, only bad things can come from adultery. There might be moments of pleasure, but in the end, those pleasures disappear and you are left with a disastrous marriage, ruined relationship both within and outside the family, a reputation that says you cannot be trusted since your spouse could not trust you.

If we would just live by the precepts the writers of Proverbs gave us more than 3,000 years ago, we could avoid so many of the problems we bring on ourselves. Those wise men give us lots of advice about the practical things of life. Loving God and pursuing him. Learning, studying, and obeying God’s laws. Family relationships. Parenting. Finances. Work ethics. The consequences of not following their advice in these areas of life.

And you know what? As I reach toward the back half of my sixth decade of life, I’m finding their advice and their knowledge of the consequences of not following their advice is absolutely true. I only wish I had followed everything they had to say. I didn’t. I don’t know very many people who have. We are pretty stubborn and selfish and most of us have a pretty healthy opinion of ourselves. We think we know the answers to life better than God. We don’t.

All we have to do is look around our world and see just how awful a job we do at following the wisdom of those writers. As humans, we fail in almost everything those authors told us. We mess up relationships because we are more interested in what we want than in caring for those we are supposed to love. We have messed up finances in every country because again we are selfish. The haves and the have nots plague our world. One percent of the world’s population owns well over 99% of its wealth. I don’t think God meant for us to live that way.

With that statement, I’m not suggesting we move to a socialist or communist society because governments have proven many times over that those countries do not fare very well. And, oh by the way, they have their one or two percent that own 95% or more of their countries wealth. Those governments never work because people are selfish and greedy by nature. Those with the wealth don’t want to give it up because if they give away some of their wealth, they won’t have it. Not that they need all of it, but they won’t have it and that’s the point. We are selfish and greedy with humongous egos.

We think we have knowledge. So did Thomas Jefferson’s generation. In the mid 1800’s the current philosophy was that there was nothing else to be learned. We knew it all. Except that today we double our knowledge base about every 12 months according to IBM and with the full build of the internet, knowledge is expected to increase every 12 hours before too many years pass. Just think of that, All the knowledge that ever was doubling every year in today’s communication systems. That blows my mind. But knowledge isn’t wisdom.

I know a lot of people with a lot of knowledge, but they can’t control their household. They are hopelessly in debt. They seem to destroy every relationship they have with their supposed knowledge. They are a total mess even though they know a lot of things. Knowledge is not wisdom.

You see, wisdom is how you use the knowledge you have. It has more to do with having peace in a chaotic world. It has to do with more than surviving or being what the world might deem as successful in life. It has to do with making from this life to the next and having an eternal reward instead of an eternal punishment. It has to do with living in community with others. Wisdom is recognizing we don’t know everything, but that’s okay. It means we recognize our limitations. We understand we need others and we especially need God.

Having wisdom is so much better than having property or money or any physical assets of any kind. With wisdom, you understand the importance of the intangibles of life. These are the things that last. The physical assets that so many run after can be taken away in a moment. Ask the people who lived through the hyperinflation years in places like Argentina when all the stores just dropped the last three zeroes in the price because 1000% inflation every few months meant a loaf of bread cost nearly thousands of pesos. Even today, now that inflation is under control, a meal for two in a mid-range restaurant will run AR 800$.

The same could happen here. Assets in stocks or property or in the bank or anything tangible can lose value overnight. Look at the housing bubble that caused property to climb unreasonably fast and fall just as fast. We watched one of the most powerful manufacturing cities in the country, Detroit, crumble and whole neighborhoods in foreclosure and houses selling for as little as $400-500. Seems unbelievable, doesn’t it? Just spend some time around Wall Street and you’ll see fortunes won and lost in hours. Nothing tangible survives.

The Pharaohs thought they could take their wealth into the afterlife with them. We know they didn’t as tomb after tomb gave up its golden treasures to grave robbers. Nothing went with those mummies that lay in those sarcophage. Everything placed in those tombs stayed there until someone took them. But their reputations survived through decades and centuries. Their histories still peak our interest. We still know something of some of their reigns. But all the things that survived them are intangible. What made the treasures of interest was the stories that go with them.

Wisdom provides the stories. Wisdom gives us the use of knowledge that brings good to others. Wisdom advances relationships and brings peace to chaotic situations. Wisdom springs from the heart of God. Wisdom knows when justice or mercy or grace is the proper response to those who wrong us. Wisdom befriends the broken, but doesn’t condone the actions that caused their brokenness. Wisdom listens like, talks like, acts like, lives like, worships like, strives to be like Christ. Knowing him is the beginning of wisdom. Without him, we are fooling ourselves thinking we are able to adequately apply any amount of knowledge in a worthy manner.

So to be wise, know him so you will know more.    

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

Check out this episode!

A daily devotional walking through God’s word together using The Bible Reading Plan at http://www.bible-reading.com/bible-plan.html. Our website http://alittlewalkwithgod.com.

Thanks for joining me today for “A Little Walk with God.” I’m your host Richard Agee.

Expect obstacles when you begin to change things around you. We’ve mentioned change is hard. We’ve talked about the importance of change, though. We are constantly changing, sometimes for good and sometimes for not so good. When we can help direct some of the change we experience, we can influence which way it will go, though.

We talked last week about that phrase that sometimes paralyzes us, but we’ve always done it this way. That’s one of those roadblocks we have to get past to effect change. Whenever you want to change something, especially if you are making monumental shifts in direction or thought or action in organizations or even in yourself, you will come up against some fairly large obstacles along the way.

Just getting the momentum to start is a big one. Inertia is one of those terms we think about in physics. It takes a lot more energy to get something moving than it does to keep it moving. That’s true of change in organizations, too. It’s hard to get things moving. You have to “sell” enough people on the idea and get enough enthusiasm behind the journey forward to get it going. It’s easy to let things move along as they’ve always gone, because it’s comfortable. It’s something we already know and people are reluctant to learn new things. Not everyone wants to be a full-time student and change requires us to be a student again.

Change sometimes seems overwhelming and when you look at the mountain of things that need to be done it can stop us cold. But how do you move a mountain? One shovel full of dirt at a time. How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. The mountain can be moved the elephant can be eaten. It might not happen in a day or a week or a month. But change can happen and we can get to the goals we set if we stay on track and remember why we are making the changes we are making.

Funds can get in the way sometimes. Where are we going to get the funds to do what we think we need to do? Money is always an issue in every church I’ve attended. I’ve never had the experience Moses had when he told the people to stop giving because they had too much. Most every church could. If everyone in every church actually gave as God directs, churches probably wouldn’t have money issues, but most people don’t give as God asks of them. If most people’s tithes and offerings actual reflect their income, then most churches are filled with people who are living like the very poorest in the Comoros Islands and Ethiopia, the poorest countries in the world.

Today’s culture asks, “What’s in it for me?”, before they give up funds. We are a selfish society. We are so often selfish individuals. I asked the question last week, “Am I willing to sacrifice for the lost?” That includes the resources God has given me. Am I willing to give up a larger portion than I have in the past to see that the work God has placed on me and my church is carried out. God’s math is really strange. I’ve always found that when I give him a tithe, one tenth of my income, he can help me do more with the remaining nine tenths than I could do with all of it. I’ve never fed five thousand men with two small loaves of bread and a handful of fish, but I’ve never been hungry either. God comes through when we are faithful to him. Funds somehow appear out of nowhere.

Change takes time. When you plant an apple seed in the ground, you won’t get apples next week. In fact, you won’t get apples next year. It can take 10 to 12 years for that seed to sprout, grow to a mature tree, and produce its first apples. Change takes time. There’s not much worth while that happens quickly. We live in an instant gratification culture, but if you think about it, you’ll find that most of that instant gratification just doesn’t last. It’s just a splash of pleasure and then it’s gone.

Change also requires grief. It’s sometimes hard to grasp the concept that doing something that will improve things includes grief, but getting that new thing means you give up something you already have. Whether it’s the familiar music or the order of service you’ve used for the last decade or your favorite parking spot or whatever it might be. When we give something up, the grief cycle is involved. Certainly, losing a parking space isn’t the same as losing a friend or loved one, but the cycle is the same. And we go through it. When there are major changes in an organization, there may be many routine things that change in a relatively short period of time. It might mean we lose several things at once. The loss of several things at once can overload our emotions as we go through that grieving process. It is especially true for those who have just experienced other stressful or grief producing events in their lives. Those leading the change must be sensitive to those facing the change and help keep everyone focused on the prize at the end.

Remember the mission? Seek and save the lost. We must keep our focus. We must continue to keep first things first. We must remember what we have that the unbeliever does not have. We have forgiveness. We have grace. We have Jesus’ legacy of peace. We have his spirit in us. We have his continuous presence. We have hope. We have eternal life. We could keep going with the list of things we have that the unbeliever does not have, but now lest stop and begin the list of what the unbeliever has. I think when I get past separation from God I hear crickets.

Are we willing to sacrifice and get through the obstacles that come our way to keep focused on the mission Jesus gave us? Are we willing to grab a shovel and attack the mountain? It may not be easy, but we are not alone. It may take time, but every day that goes by more of those unbelievers are leaving this world for an eternity without God. Every day that sneaks past us is another opportunity to lift up Christ to a world that needs to hear the message of hope and mercy and grace that he told us to share with those outside the church walls.

If your son or daughter were in a house engulfed in flames, what would you be willing to do to get them out and save their lives? There are those right next door that are on their way to a destiny Jesus described as worse than the garbage heap outside Jerusalem that was always burning. The fire never went out. The flames never ceased. The stench of the burning garbage was terrible. The hell Jesus described as worse than that burning garbage he said was the place for all those unbelievers around us. They are God’s creation just as you and I are God’s creation. We were them until God’s mercy reached us. That was us until we experienced his grace. Except for our saying yes to Jesus’ call, we are just like those blind, lost, unbelievers all around us.

Do we care enough to break through whatever obstacles Satan might put in our path to keep us from doing the mission God gave us to do? We talked about that simple mission. The church is the body of Christ. His mission and so our mission is to seek and save the lost. He didn’t let anything get in his way. Can we do any less? Can we allow tradition or routine or comfort or anything stop us from carrying the message to the lost? The message never changes, the method does. Jesus is the way. Our job is to point other to him. We can’t do that from the comfortable seats inside our churches. We must go…and make disciples. We must go…and baptize them. We must go…and teach them his ways. We must go…if we think we are to seek the lost.

That is a change the church and its people must make since the lost will not come to us. How about it? Are you ready for the change? It’s about time for a real revival. It must happen first as a change in me and you and our churches. Let’s do it.

You can find me at richardagee.com. I also invite you to join us at San Antonio First Church of the Nazarene on West Avenue in San Antonio to hear more Bible based teaching. You can find out more about my church at SAF.church. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed it, tell a friend. If you didn’t, send me an email and let me know how better to reach out to those around you. Until next week, may God richly bless you as you venture into His story each day.

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