Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.
--Psalm 37:4
Harland Sanders, who you might know better as Colonel Sanders, had a difficult life. His father died when he was 5, he quit school at 16, and by the time he was 20, Harland had suffered every kind of setback imaginable. He lost jobs, and his young wife took their daughter and moved out.
Eventually Harland became a cook and dishwasher at a little café, his wife and daughter came back, and, together, he and his wife worked in the diner for decades.
When Harland retired at age 65, he became severely depressed, and even suicidal, when he realized that he and his wife could not live on his $105 monthly Social Security check.
As he sat down to write out his last will and testament, he began to think of things he still wanted to do in his life. He began to dream again for the first time in years.
And that’s when he came up with the idea of selling chicken door-to-door in little boxes. And the rest, as they say, is history. You see, God gave him a brand new dream, and Harland ran with it!
As long as you are on this earth, God is not done with you. He is going to do something good with your life. That’s the promise of God for everyone who believes!
AS LONG AS YOU ARE ON THIS EARTH, GOD IS NOT DONE WITH YOU.
Thursday, August 08, 2019
by Dr. Paul Chappell
“If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. Set your affection on things above, not on things on the earth. For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall ye also appear with him in glory.”
Colossians 3:1–4
The direction of our lives is determined by the things that we love. God calls us to love Him and that which is attached to Him rather than the things which attract those around us. “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (1 John 2:15). It takes work and spiritual discipline to keep our affection set on the things of God in the face of distractions all around us.
Jonathan Edwards wrote, “Persons need not and ought not to set any bounds to their spiritual and gracious appetites, [instead they ought] to be endeavoring by all possible ways to inflame their desires and to obtain more spiritual pleasures. Our hungerings and thirstings after God and Jesus Christ and after holiness cannot be too great for the value of these things, for they are things of infinite value. There is no such thing as excess in our taking of this spiritual food. There is no such virtue as temperance in spiritual feasting.”
If we do not love God as we should, we will not walk in His ways for long. In his final letter to Timothy, Paul lamented the condition of a man who had once been one of his stalwart helpers in the ministry. “For Demas hath forsaken me, having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica; Crescens to Galatia, Titus unto Dalmatia” (2 Timothy 4:10). We do not control the world around us, but we can control what we love.
Today's Growth Principle:
It is impossible to love God and love the world at the same time—and we must love God.
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