Hey
Gang: As exulted leader of the
Village, I was invited to speak many times and share the successes we were
seeing at the Village. Each time that I
was in route to where I would speak I prayed, “Lord, give me something fresh
that I can share to this group that will hit their hot button.”
On one such trip I stopped at a Burger King to
get my usual burger and fries and noticed a poster on the wall. It was in the early days of the Star Wars
craze and the poster announced in very bold print “Your choices determine your destiny.” I said, “Thank you Lord” and dug into the
burger and fries.
But, shortly
after hitting the road, I received a tap on the shoulder from the Throne Room
saying that there was a prerequisite to that saying. It should read, “Your values, determine your choices which in turn determine your
destiny.”
Getting back
to the Scripture of the morning, the question arises, “Did What? When hungry you fed me, thirsty, you gave
me water, a stranger you befriended me, naked you clothed me, when sick you
came to me and in prison you visited.
But Lord when Did I do those things to you? What a fabulous answer He
gave, “When you did it to the least…”
– you did it to the Most -the Lord of Glory!”
I was forced
to go to Walmart the other day and, as per usual, I was thirty fifth (just
joking) in line and it seemed every person in front of me had some sort of
problem. One had to be blind to not
realize the cashier, probably a grandmother, was feeling very defeated and
down.
When my turn
finally came I smiled and said, ”Good morning.
How are you this morning?” And
then a saw a miracle – she looked up and began to smile. Now, if I were to guess, I believe that dear
lady had a much better morning after that.
I love the
little words of the Bible, the ifs, ands, thens, the therefores , and
most of all the “I will’s. They tend to be the trigger words of the
Bible that precede a truth that God wants His kids to pay special attention
to. Now, you take the challenge to
invest the time to look at every one of these words in the Bible and you will
be into every book and nearly every chapter and verse.
The Book of Revelation
has become a much taught, discussed and read book, especially as the alligators
continue to rise in our culture and all that can be shaken is being shaken.
Jesus began His dictation of the Book of Revelation with a fabulous promise: “Blessed is he who reads and those who hear
the words of the prophecy, and heed the things which are written in it, for the
time is near” (Rev. 1:3). Does that
light a fire in the depths of your heart to dig into the meat and potatoes of
Revelation?
I believe
there are many special and very wonderful blessings hidden in the Book of
Revelation. For me, personally, I
believe one of the blessings is, if you study each verse and follow the road
maps that lead to other verses that add to and clarify what Jesus is saying,
you will find at the end of the story you have been in every book in the Bible.
I want to
share one other word in the Scriptures that has become very special to me. That word is “measure”. Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount, taught
this: “Do not judged,…for in the way you
judge, you will be judged, and by your standard of MEASURE, it will be
MESASURED to You” (Matt. 7:1-2).
Now turn
with me to Luke 6:38 and notice the good doctors challenge: “Give, and it will be given to you.
They will pour into your lap a good measure – pressed down, shaken
together, and running over. For by your standard of MEASURE it will be MEASURED
to you in return”.
Now I ask
you, when Jesus said, “You did it to the
least of these my brethren” does that connect with Paul’s words in his
second letter to the Corinthians when he said, “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly and he who sows
bountifully will also reap bountifully, each one must do just as he has purposed
in his heart, not grudgingly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful
giver”. (2 Cor. 9:6-11).
If God
judges you on “What you have done with
Jesus in your life” using the “MEASURE” criteria, will you pass muster on
the “You did it to the least of these”
MEASURE?
Blessings,
Gramps
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