I got to sit next to one of my grandsons this
morning in church. I loved it! Just being around my grandchildren infuses me
with happiness. Do they wear me out sometimes? Of course, let’s face it – I’m
old. But
- the energy and life they pour into me far outweighs anything they get
from me; they drain off the negative energy!
So, as we sat there trying to pay attention
while making paper airplanes, I wrote out a line from the sermon that snagged
in the web of my brain. If it’s not exactly what he said, it’s what I heard and
processed.
When our children were younger, sometimes after
a church service I’d ask them what they brought away from the message.
Presuming that Joe’s parents might do the same thing to make sure I wasn’t distracting
him with my verbosity and antics (yes, I’ve been known to perform antics during
sermons… like the time I squeezed eye drops from my bottle into the ears of the
man in front of me. Yes. I have adhd and sometimes it shows, but I digress…), I
also wrote on my notebook page, “In case your parents ask what you learned in
church, learn this.”
Wow. Bad grandma! Was that cheating?
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| (reddit.com) |
I have to give the boy credit, though. He can
multi-task like nobody’s business. He was totally paying attention to pastor
and the videos we watched, interjecting his thoughts from time to time, while
producing better paper airplanes than I could. Truth be told, he may have taken
away more from the sermon than I did! And yes, he memorized my note, having
glanced at it just once.
Yesterday, I attended a teaching on how to
effectively share the love God pours into you, with others in a very brief
moment. It’s a method that may or may not create lifelong friends, but, it’s a
way to open the door for dialog with someone you know, or with a stranger. If
you’d like, you can check it out here, it’s called the One Minute Witness .
Witnessing about God’s love isn’t something
we do, it’s something we are.
We are His witnesses, because we are
the proof of His love in the earth.
Okay, so some of us don’t show it as well as
others. But, it’s not because we don’t have God’s love within us, it’s because
we’re weary or fearful or just too busy. We need to do something about that.
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| (encourageyourspouse.com) |
In Christ, we can surrender our fears.
“There
is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear….” – 1 John 4:18 (NIV)
In Christ, we can surrender our busyness and
the stressors that wear us out. “Come to
me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” – Matthew 11:28
(NIV)
In Christ we can surrender anything that
holds us back or fights within us to keep us down: our past, our job, our
friends, our families, our anxieties – anything.
The things we surrender don’t vanish into
thin air. This isn’t a magic show of lights and mirrors. The power of love that
lives within us inspires us in the midst
of those things.
Today, consider allowing the life you’re
living in Christ to yield proof of God’s love to those around you, everyone
around you.
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| (layman.org) |
