"For the word of
God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as
far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and cable to
judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb. 4:12).
Hey Gang: I want to
share a warning with you this morning. A
warning that I have had to guard against all my Christian life, 'Repetition leads
to apathy'. God challenged my heart several
years ago to make sure I was passing my Christian legacy down to the ‘bone of
my bone’ family. Many take great pains
to pass their material wealth on to their children but fail to share what God
has done in their lives and with their loved ones.
Gramps Morning Thoughts grew out of that challenge. The first messages were sent to my family and
a few adopted family members, but through the years the number grew. My prayer has been that they not become a
repetitious exercise that had no lasting meaning to the reader, and that God
would put His thoughts into my head. I
have also prayed daily that when they no longer challenge the hearts of the
readers He would alert me that it was time to shut them down. I confess there
have been several times when I felt God was saying just that.
But each time I set a number, which was not really my place
to do, there would be a splurge in the number of readers. Now I want to share what I believe is an
emphatic miracle from God -- perhaps
even a reprimand! Because there were
very low numbers for a period of time, I decided that, if the number of hits on
the blog stayed at these digits for period of time, I would put ‘Gramps’ to bed,
(not my place to do so – and the numbers do not count those on email).
Then something phenomenal happened! Within a day or two, there were 502 hits on
the blog and a week later 576! But the following days, after these humongous
numbers, the hits reduced to single digits again.
I prayed that God would show me clearly when it was time to
stop the blogs because repetition had set in and they had lost their
purpose. I can think of no reason why
suddenly, when I was seriously considering stopping the morning messages, these
humongous numbers appeared -except God was sending me a message to get my
eyes off the numbers.
Now for confession time:
I had let numbers be the control factor in whether the morning messages
had become repetitious and lost their meaning.
I also confess that when I tended to get on a pity party because the
numbers were low, He would lay it on the heart of one of the readers to send a
special message of encouragement. But
what really touched my heart was Luke 15 where we find the story of the one
lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son.
It would be wonderful to know if one lost soul was found
through the morning messages but that is not for me to know. You see l am merely a seed planter, the
harvesting is in the hands of Abba Father.
I have learned that there are times when we need a poke from Father God
to” spur us into action” (Hebrews
10:24 –Ryan’s verse) and leave the driving up to Him. We need to learn the "Trust in the Lord with all our heart and
lean not on our own understanding." (Pro. 3:5).
Soooo, friends and neighbors, our world is spinning out of
control so very rapidly but, in the midst of the tragic events that are part of
the daily news, God is doing a might work in preparation for His coming. We need to be up to speed on what those
miraculous things are. We will try to keep
you advised of some of these major happenings
.
Blessings,
Gramps
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