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Weekly Wisdom Winnows
by Lisa Mendenhall
How do you know when your car is going to run out of gas? You know right before it dies and you coast to a stop? It starts to sputter and spit and slowly loses power until it comes to a total stop. It ain't going no further! Not unless you want to get out and push that car down the road!
How do we know when we spiritually run out of gas? We start to spit and sputter and slowly we lose power until our motor dies and we coast to a stop. The only difference between us and that car is that when we stop spiritually we go in reverse! We start eating up the miles going backwards. There is not a spiritual gear called park. It is either forward or reversed. Now there are different speeds but no parking gear!
What are the signs of the spiritually spitting and sputtering? We start sliding into our old pattern of behavior and thinking. We start saying and doing things that when we were tanked up on God would have never come out of our mouth. We start making excuses for ourselves and then get offended when someone loves us enough to point out the truth and we get our feathers all ruffled up and say things like, "I know just as much of the Word as they do!, Well at least I didn't blah blah blah…."
We forget what manner of person we are. The Word of God says in James 1:23-24
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Next step is after we get offended we fall away. And it is no ones fault but our own. It does not matter what anyone did to us, or said to us, or said to our children or about our children. It does not change that Jesus said walk in love regardless. But we forgot! Because we were on E in our spiritual gas tanks so we had nothing to draw from when the time came. Our heart had started hardening because of gradually going back into sin and our old way of behavior. You may say, "I may not be where I am suppose to be but I am not sinning!" Oh really? Did you talk about anyone today? Did you yell at your wife, husband or children in anger or frustration? Did you say something ugly to the guy who pulled out in front of you? Did you treat your boss or coworker with the cold shoulder because of something they said about you last week? Don't tell me you are not in sin when you are running on empty in your tank. You have no confidence to draw from God because you know you haven't done what was needed to get back on track. Why am I being so hard on you and me?
Because if we don't get off our duff and tighten our britches, lace up our shoes and start our race again, we will look up one day and it will be over and we will have nothing to show for all the years we were on the earth except that we made it to heaven. I don't know about you but I sure would like to stand before my Daddy-God with more than just apologies and excuses for not walking the way I should have here on this earth. Walking so that my light shines and everyone knows that I stand for God and I display Godly fruit! I don't want to have to try to explain away why I wasn't helping my brothers and sisters in Christ because I had kept something stuck in my crawl because of what someone said or did too me twelve years ago!
So what is the answer? We need to ask God's forgiveness for letting people, things and the busyness of life get in the way of putting our relationship with Him first. He has to be first place in our life. He HAS to be for us to make it through successfully and with out going backwards. Sincerely from your heart tell Him that you are sorry that you got off track and ask Him for His mercy and His grace to help you pick back up and start over again. Then start right where you are. Don't try to go back and pick up; don't try to do everything you didn't do right the first time, just start right where you are, just like you were beginning your race. Remember those days? When you couldn't get enough of the Word? You couldn't talk enough about it to anyone who would listen? You prayed and stayed in His presence as long as you possibly could? Start there. He is waiting for you. He wants to fill your tank and show you how to keep it filled. Go ahead and start now. He is more excited about you starting back than you are! I am in it with you. Let's go run our race and don't look back! God bless! Lisa
For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: 24 For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. When we are not staying tanked up on the Word of God and the presence of God we forget that we are suppose to act and talk like Him! We are suppose to love like Him! WE FORGET!Rate it:
'To separate the chaff from (grain) by means of a current of air. To rid of undesirable parts. To separate or get rid of (an undesirable part); eliminate: winnowing out the errors in logic. ...separate grain from chaff...separate the good from the bad...examine closely in order to separate the good from the bad; sift...' (www.dictionary.com) 'This study gave me direction and focus for my teaching. God had placed a longing in my heart to teach the body of Christ how to separate from carnal thinking and rid themselves of old ways that hinder their Spiritual growth. I desire to see them live victoriously, by the 'higher ways' of God's wisdom.'
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