Editor: Richard (Dick) Innes
Published by: ACTS International
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Vol. 15 – No. 3513 August 31, 2013
Thought for the week: "Your abilities don't define who you are, your choices do." – Unknown
"One man with courage makes up a majority." – Andrew Jackson
"Great minds have purpose, others have wishes." – Washington Irving
"Men see what is and ask why. I see what could be and ask why not." – Pablo Picasso
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." – Winston Churchill
"You can't turn back the clock, but you can certainly wind it up again." – Unknown
Friendship is a gift. A friend is someone who fills our lives with beauty, joy and grace, and makes the world in which we live a better and
happier place" – Unknown
A candidate for City Council was doing some door-to-door campaigning, and things were going pretty well, he thought, until he came to the house of a grouch-looking fellow. After the candidate's little speech, the fellow said, "Vote for you? Why I'd rather vote for the devil."
"I understand," said the candidate. "But in case your friend is not running, may I count on your support?"
Years ago I heard Houston pastor, John Bisango, speak. He described a time when his daughter, Melodye Jan, age five, asked for a dollhouse. John nodded and promised to build her one, then returned to his book. But glancing out the window, he saw Melodye, arms crammed with dishes and dolls, making trip after trip until she had a great pile in the yard. He asked his wife what she was doing.
"Oh, you promised to build her a dollhouse, and she believes you. She's just getting ready for it."
"I tossed aside that book, raced to the lumberyard for supplies and quickly built that little girl a doll house," John said. "Why? It was her simple, childlike faith in his promise."1
1. Robert J. Morgan, The Red Sea Rules, 10 God-Given Strategies for Difficult Times, Thomas Nelson, Publishers (Nashville, 2001). Cited onwww.sermons.com
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith;
Where there is despair, hope;
Where there is darkness, light;
And where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
To be consoled as to console;
to be understood as to understand;
To be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive;
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned;
And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
Dr. Ed Wheat writes that "Bad marriages are contagious. Numerous psychiatric research studies have shown that when couples with neurotic marriage relationships get divorced—no matter how good their intentions may be—they nearly always remarry into the very same type of neurotic relationship they had before."1
This is true if divorced people don't get into a recovery program to overcome the unresolved issues in their life that caused them to be attracted to the person they married in the first place. The reality is that we are either as sick or as healthy as the partner we are attracted to.
It's either resolution or repetition—for what we fail to resolve we are destined to repeat. Only healthy, mature people have healthy, mature relationships. To expect otherwise is being totally unrealistic.
1. Ed Wheat, How to Fall in Love, Stay in Love, Zondervan, 1980. p, 204.
I've talked before about the ethical obligation to treat others with respect by attentive listening. Today, I want to talk about the flip side of respect: the duty to back off and accept the fact that while others should listen to us, we can't demand that they agree with us.
Such unreasonable demands are especially prevalent when someone in authority (boss or parent) lectures, criticizes, sermonizes, or berates an employee or child well past the point of legitimate communication. But it isn't just people of authority who seek to impose their ideas through bulldozer tactics.
The common thread in disrespectful communication is going beyond reasonable attempts to inform or persuade. At that point it becomes a harangue. It's as if the speaker is trying to beat us into submission rather than simply conveying a point of view, pummeling us with repetitive opinions, complaints, or demands. And if we don't give the desired response, the speaker restates the point louder or more aggressively.
Telling browbeaters that we understand their position and will consider what they said rarely stops the onslaught because the only way they'll believe we understand their point is if we agree with it. They can become so self-righteous that they think disagreeing with them is proof of confusion, ignorance, stupidity, or a closed mind.
No one has the right to impose his or her opinions on others or to demand to be listened to until he or she is done. The moral obligation of respect requires that we learn when to back off and that we learn when to listen.
This is Michael Josephson reminding you that character counts.
"His [God's] purpose in all of this was that the nations should seek after God and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him—though he is not far from any one of us. For in him we live and move and exist."1
Years ago Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) insightfully said, "What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself."
This is true and vital but I would dare to suggest that it doesn't present the entire picture for, as Pascal also said, "There is a God-shaped vacuum [or cup, as I like to put it] in the heart" of all of us; there is also a people-shaped cup. And while our God-shaped cup needs to be filled with the love of God, our people-shaped cup needs to be filled with the love of people.
If either one of these cups is empty, life can feel void and meaningless. And then we seek to fill the void within and deaden the pain of our empty lives with things, endless activities, seeking approval, super-busyness, illicit sex, alcohol, drugs and stuff, stuff, and more stuff and, at least here in the West, we are left longing in the midst of a land of plenty.
The fact is that God has created us for relationships— both with himself and each other. It has been rightfully said that 80 percent of life's satisfaction comes from the quality of our relationships. Without loving relationships we limp along in the shadows of life and will most likely die long before our time. While it may not be desirable, we can live without romantic love, but we cannot live healthily without healthy loving relationships with at least one or two—and preferably more—other persons.
Furthermore, without a meaningful relationship with God, there is a deep sense of spiritual emptiness of the soul. When God created mankind, he created us with the capacity to communicate with him, to be connected to him in spirit. The tragedy is that when sin entered the human race, we were separated or disconnected from God. But because God loved us he sent his Son, Jesus, to die on the cross in our place to pay the penalty for all our sins so we could be fully forgiven and be reconnected to God and then, through Jesus, get our God-cup or god-shaped vacuum filled.
Note: To begin a spiritual connection/relationship with God, be sure to read the article, "How to Know God and be sure you're a real Christian without having to be religious" online at: www.actsweb.org/christian.
Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me to develop healthy, loving relationships both with you and with others. And please reveal to me if there are any barriers in my life that might be hindering either one of these relationships. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
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