Just Do It

By Lori Freeland –

Remember when the Nike catch phrase—Just Do It–first came out?

Yes, that dates me, but the words have stuck. I think I still have the t-shirt buried in a box of high school memories somewhere.

A lot of life just needs to happen without forethought. Hence the motto—Just Do It. Here are a few things we can do without much pondering.

Send your friends an email telling them how grateful you are to have them in your life. Even if they didn’t come to your ten times removed second cousin’s piano recital.

Reach out to your daughter, love on her, tell her how beautiful she is. Even if she hasn’t combed her hair in a week and a giant ketchup stain mars her shirt—the brand new one you bought that wasn’t on sale.

Corner you son, even if he is now a foot taller than you, and love on him. And even if you can’t see it yet, tell him he’s going to be a great man.

Buy your sister a book on her wish list and mail it with a card that says, “I’m sorry I stole your boyfriend in the seventh grade.” Trust me, she still remembers.

Call your brother, say, “I love you,” then hang up. Because men don’t like to talk on the phone.

Mail your mother a card with a flower on it. Thank her for cooking your meals and making your bed and doing your laundry.

Text your father. Thank him for showing up for all those band and choir concerts. And your three-hour long high school graduation.

Thank your parents—even if they weren’t perfect. They tried. Parenting is hard. The hardest project I’ve ever undertaken—second to marriage.

Which brings me to—

Be grateful for your spouse. God is using your husband or wife to make you a better person. Don’t forget, iron sharpens iron, even if it hurts sometimes.

Hug your husband before he leaves for work. Even if he left his underwear at the foot of the bed and forgot to brush his teeth.

Kiss your wife just because you can—not because you want something else.

Encourage random people today. Even if they’re mean to you in the Starbucks line. It’s easy to be nice when others are nice—not so much when someone irritates the snot out of you. That takes real control.

“But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness (Hebrews 3:13 NIV).

Standing the Watch

By Alan Mowbray –

Have you been asking God for something lately? I know I have. Do you feel the answers are slow or non-existent? Me too—that is, until the other day when I read Habakkuk 2:1.

“I will climb up to my watchtower and stand at my guardpost. There I will wait to see what the Lord says and how he will answer my complaint.” (NLT)

The moment I read that scripture, something clicked. As a former Navy submariner, I’ve stood a few watches. Six hours or more at a time—some watches on deck, some below decks.

Each watch station has its own characteristics, but what’s unique about all watches is that initially, you as the person taking the watch are unprepared. Yes, you’ve put on your uniform, donned your weapons, strapped on your protective gear—but that doesn’t leave you ready. So you go to your watch station and do the turnover routine with the off-going watch—unprepared.

Once you have assumed the watch, the real preparation happens.

When standing topside security watch on a submarine in port, there’s a lot going on. Initially, when you take the watch, all that activity has an equal priority to your ears, eyes, and mind. For the first ten or fifteen minutes, your mind performs the last portion of preparation for that watch—creating dynamic filters.

After standing there for a while, just listening, observing silently, your brain starts to block things out. That steam vent fifty feet away that pops off every 4 minutes fades into the background. The roar of the diesel engine powering the crane at the end of the pier becomes a quiet rumble. Even the soft, gentle slap of waves against the curve of the sub’s hull, the ebb and flow of its tidal forces tugging the ship against the creaking mooring lines, and its seemingly random pushing around of loose pilings against each other under the pier all disappear.

A different silence emerges.

Finally, you are prepared to hear and see and to stand your watch effectively. Even your body can sense differences around you. Now you’re really “on watch.”

New sounds touch your ears—conversations audible at couple hundred feet away, footsteps of someone walking on the deck of the ship opposite you, distant laughter, and unseen doors opening and closing. Your brain filters out what doesn’t change, while enhancing what does.

Until I read that verse in Habakkuk, I had forgotten what waiting on the Lord is really about. This is the position I should have put myself in when waiting for an answer from God. At my watch station. Alert. Mouth shut. Ears open to hear that still small voice speaking to my spirit.

(I Kings 19:11-13) He created us to hear His voice in spite of the clutter.

I won’t forget again.

Signs of the End Times? – Birds of Prey

By Dianne E. Butts –

A booklet titled 101 Last Days Prophecies published by Eternal Productions lists “birds of prey” in Israel as one of the Last Days prophecies. You can see an online version of the booklet on the “101 Prophecies” page on Eternal-Productions’ web site.

Number 58 of their 101 says, “It is a little known fact that Israel is the bird migration capital of the world.” Do you find that interesting?

According to the booklet, “During the spring and fall migrations, billions of birds fly over Israel. Many of these migratory birds are raptors—carrion (dead flesh) eating birds of prey. In fact, 34 species of raptors migrate over Israel.”

If you search the internet on birds of prey in Israel, there’s a lot of interesting information. I even found some bird-watching tours that visitors can take.

This fact itself is not a prophecy of the End Times, but the booklet links the fact to Scripture verses that talk about many birds gorging themselves on the flesh of God’s enemies—people who fight against God in the final battle of the End Times.

Here are three such verses:

Ezekiel 39:4: “On the mountains of Israel you will fall, you and all your troops and the nations with you. I will give you as food to all kinds of carrion birds and to the wild animals.”

Ezekiel 39:17: “Son of man, this is what the Sovereign LORD says: Call out to every kind of bird and all the wild animals: ‘Assemble and come together from all around to the sacrifice I am preparing for you, the great sacrifice on the mountains of Israel. There you will eat flesh and drink blood.”

Revelation 19:17-21:

17 And I saw an angel standing in the sun, who cried in a loud voice to all the birds flying in midair, “Come, gather together for the great supper of God, 18 so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and mighty men, of horses and their riders, and the flesh of all people, free and slave, small and great.”

19 Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to make war against the rider on the horse [who is, in verse 16, the “King of Kings and Lord of Lords”] and his army. 20 But the beast was captured, and with him the false prophet who had performed the miraculous signs on his behalf. With these signs he had deluded those who had received the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. The two of them were thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur. 21 The rest of them were killed with the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse, and all the birds gorged themselves on their flesh.”

In that last sentence, “the sword that came out of the mouth of the rider on the horse” refers back to verse 15, which describes the rider on the horse, who is Jesus Christ, and says, “Out of his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations.”

If you don’t know what that sharp sword is, here are two hints:

Revelation 19:13: “…his name is the Word of God.”

Ephesians 6:17: “…the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.”

Jesus is the Word of God personified. Everything God ever said or promised with His words has come to fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

Do you believe an entire army of all God’s enemies combined can be defeated with one Word?

Expiration Date

By Kathy Carlton Willis –

“Is it okay to use cheese that has mold on it? Can’t I just cut off the mold and use the good part?”

This was a recent question on the Rachel Ray television show. It got my attention because I’m guilty of letting food park in my refrigerated “garage” too long. I hate to let things go to waste, but I won’t use food that might make me sick. So how do you know?

Rachel Ray answered the cheese question by saying the moldy cheese will never taste as good again, even if the mold is removed, unless it was a moldy cheese to begin with, such as Gorgonzola. She went on to mention another offensive item in the refrigerator, anything past its expiration date. I’ve heard it time and time again that the expiration date is there for a reason—I get that. But what if the date is a “sell by” date instead? Then how do you know if the item is still okay? Usually it is the milk that has a sell by date, and there is an easy way to tell if it has gone bad—if you are willing to recruit your nose for the job!

One tip I learned early in my marriage was how to know if eggs are still fresh—and these can be used past the expiration date. Put the suspicious egg in a bowl of salted cold water. If it floats, throw it out. If it sinks, it is fresh. If it swims somewhere in the middle of the water—neither floating nor sinking—it is safe to use for baking or for deviled eggs, but not fresh enough for an eggs and bacon breakfast.

All this talk about expiration dates got me to thinking about our time to leave this earth. Some believe when it is your time to go, it will happen no matter what you do to alter the date and time. I know a few cases documented in the Bible of people who actually were able to bargain with God for a later expiration date.

One thing we should focus on more than the expiration date is the “use by” date. Yep—I fooled you. That is the same as the expiration date. You know what that tells me? All creation is meant to be useful to the very end. Usefulness to God might look a lot different from the “usefulness” we struggle to achieve. While doing good works is good, what God really finds useful is when we are in fellowship with Him. He created us to walk and talk with Him. And really—can’t we continue that to the very end?

In the great egg test of life, I hope God finds that I sink rather than float. And if you knew my swimming ability, you would realize just how possible that might be.

Feeling expired? Trade it in for feeling INSPIRED.

“And there are distinctive varieties of operation [of working to accomplish things], but it is the same God Who inspires and energizes them all in all” (1 Corinthians 12:6 AMP).

Does God Change?

By Warren Mueller –

I have heard some say that the Christian concept of an unchanging God is not compatible with Biblical teachings. God says clearly in Malachi 3:6 that He does not change. However, God determines to destroy the Israelites for worshipping the golden calf, but relents and seems to change his mind after Moses pleads for them (Exodus 32:7-14). Also, Isaiah tells King Hezekiah that his death is imminent but then he shortly thereafter tells the King that God has heard his prayers and has decided to heal him and give him fifteen additional years (2 Kings 20:1-5). Furthermore, doesn’t the birth of Jesus bring about a change in God because prior to this event, God was not human?

If God does change then He can’t be perfect in knowledge and power. This implies that God is somehow limited because He is learning and changing through new experiences. We are left with a God who is not in perfect control of our world and does not know every event that will occur in the future. This is very different from what the Bible says about God knowing all things and having the power to bring about every detail of His plans according to his will (Is 46:10; John 21:17; Hebrews 4:13; Rev 19:6).

So how can these apparent conflicting verses and concepts be reconciled? I believe that those verses where God appears to change his mind in response to something that man does—such as the pleading of Moses or the prayers of Hezekiah—do not represent a true change in God’s plans. If God knows all things, then He knows ultimately what will happen in every situation. In the case of Moses, He knows that He will not destroy the Israelites but tells Moses He intends to in order to reveal His holiness and intolerance to sin. He desires to have a relationship with Moses and so interacts with him to show His love and merciful characteristics.

Humans exist in a linear dimension of time so our understanding of events is sequential. However, God is eternal and His existence is not bound by time. God may exist in a time dimension that is a plane instead of a straight line. If this is true, then He sees the timeline of this world without being bound to it.

Finally, the Bible gives insights into why the birth of Jesus does not equate to a change in the experience and knowledge of God. First, Jesus appeared to various people in the Old Testament as a flesh and bones or pre-incarnate human (Gen 18:1-7; Judges 6:11-22). Also, man is created in the image of God (Gen 1:27). Therefore, man resembles God in that some of the attributes of God are embodied in mankind. Thus, the birth of Jesus does not represent a change in the attributes or experience of God.

God obviously has many more and perfect attributes than does man. What is amazing is that those who are reconciled to God through Jesus will be given even more of God’s attributes and become even more like him.

“The Lord Jesus Christ who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body. (Phil 3:20-21).

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