Bible devotion: Forty Years Ago - Psalm 116:12

Psalm 116:12           What shall I return to the Lord for all His goodness to me?

            Forty years ago this month, I tried to take my own life by overdosing myself with the tranquilizers that I was taking. I was eighteen years old, very selfish and self-centered. I wanted to end my life as a means of punishing my parents for the misery that I felt was all their fault. I even wrote a dramatic suicide note which was very spiteful, as well as melodramatic. I felt that I had the right to end my life because it wasn’t going the way I wanted.

            My girlfriend Rhona, and two of my best friends, Stevie and Rose Mary, found me unconscious in my bedroom. When they couldn’t wake me up, they realized that something serious had taken place. They very quickly took me in a taxi to the ER, where my stomach was pumped to get rid of the pills, in order to lessen the impact of my foolish suicide attempt. I spent three days in the hospital recovering from my stupidity.

            The following forty years could never have happened without their life-saving intervention. Somehow God allowed me to live, through their immediate response and quick thinking. I would never have known all of the blessings that I have experienced since then – my marriage to Evelyn, the birth of my two daughters, my faith in God, and the calling He has given me. I was young, rash, and foolish, but God was patient, loving, and merciful.

            Life never gives us everything that we want, but I believe God gives us all that we need. I owe my life to three people on Earth and will always be indebted to them. I also owe absolutely everything to God, who placed them in my life at one of its most crucial and critical of times. I am eternally indebted to God’s grace and goodness, which I can never repay nor given anything equal in return.

            Life is good. Each day is a gift. Every friend that we have is more precious than gold. All the love we experience in life comes directly from God. How can we ever repay those blessings? What shall we return to the Lord for all His goodness to us?

Prayer:          Lord Jesus, we love You. We thank You for the gift of life and love, as well as friends and faith. Help us to share these blessings with all whom we encounter and meet today. In Your Holy Name, we cheerfully pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment or ask questions about today’s message, please send him an email to Traqair@aol.com.

Today’s image is John’s latest bird drawings called “Allyson’s Bird.” If you would like to view a larger version, please click on this link: Lilac Bird.

Christian devotions: Naughty or Nice? - Luke 6:26

Luke 6:26                   Woe to you when all men speak well of you, for that is how their fathers treated the false prophets.

            They are called “Blessings and Woes” in the Gospel of Luke. It’s the Good Doctor’s equivalent of what Matthew wrote in his Gospel when Jesus preached the sermon on the hillside. Most people know the Matthew 5 version; very few have ever read or compared Luke’s version of the same message. Church people tend to want things to be bright and positive, cheerful and light – Matthew supplies that in his record of the Beatitudes. Luke, however, who was a physician, was perhaps more used to thinking in terms of remedies and consequences. His version of what Christ said reads more like a spiritual health warning from God.

            I often struggle with this in the ministry God has given me. There’s a fine balance between preaching, teaching, and writing what people want to hear or read, as opposed to what God wants us to understand. Life is not a game, it’s a gift. Faith is not a spiritual convenience, it’s a constant challenge. The symbol of what we believe in is not a smiley face, it’s a cross. In my humble opinion, Christianity is the hardest faith that anyone can seek to live by; it meddles with our lifestyle choices and interferes with our ideals. Sometimes, as Christians, we have to assertively push back against society and our own community because the wrong ideas and sinful choices are being promoted.

            C. S. Lewis in his wonderful book “Mere Christianity” wrote this: ‘A world of nice people, content in their own niceness, looking no further, turned away from God, would be just as desperately in need of salvation as a miserable world — and might even be more difficult to save.’ Luke’s version of the Beatitudes reminds us that all of our choices have both positive and negative eternal consequences. If we take salvation for granted, we will never be saved. If we live by our own personal creed, as opposed to Christ’s challenging message, we will never see God.

Questions for personal reflection

Where does my faith challenge me most? Do I surrender to Christ’s demands or the world’s ways?

Prayer:                        Lord Jesus, being a Christian is never easy and we each have crosses to bear. We sometimes think sin is just ‘being naughty’ and faith is just ‘being nice.’ Within our hearts and minds we know that there’s more to life than just being superficial. Teach us the serious differences between sin and salvation, deliverance and damnation, blessings and woes. In Your Holy Name, we humbly pray. Amen.

John Stuart is the pastor of Erin Presbyterian Church in Knoxville, Tennessee. If you would like to comment on today’s message, please send him an email to pastor@erinpresbyterian.org.

Today’s image is John’s latest waterfall drawing. It’s called “Heavenly Falls.” If you would like to view a larger version, please click on the following link: http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8020/7593826054_57a16df2f2_b.jpg