“I know not what others may say, but as for me, you take the sundials and give me the sun.” –Eugene Manlove Rhodes (Paso Por Aqui)
“Lord, remind me how brief my time on earth will be. Remind me that my days are numbered— how fleeting my life is.” –Psalm 39:4 (NLT)
I was reading through some past devotions and came across this very astute statement.
“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Look around and this is seen everywhere. In fact, this is one of the greatest lies of the devil; he flings it out and the world grabs hold of it. Anarchy is not freedom; it is chaos. To be truly free there must be boundaries. One of the greatest types of slavery is when man is slave to himself and his passions.
A favorite verse for Christians to quote and claim its promise is, “He shall give you the desires of your heart.” Yeah, and they go hog-wild trying to fulfill their heart’s desires. Here is where they miss two very important things. This is the second half of the verse, they tend to throw out the first part, “delight in the law of the Lord and then….” If you remind them of that portion the cry now becomes “legalism!” They want license without restraint.
The second part that they are missing is the fact that if we delight in God’s law then our desires will be His desires and not our own. We will want the things of God and not the things of the world. Selfishness will have faded away.
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This year my daily devotions have centered primarily in Proverbs. That is a very eye-opening study. One verse that I remember is Proverbs 10:16, “The wages of the righteous bring them life, but the income of the wicked brings them punishment.” Las Vegas is appropriately nicknamed “Sin City.” It has glitter and glamour and makes a promise that will be unfulfilled. People will go home poorer, sorrowful, and often bitter. Take that one step further and you will realize that the wages of sin is death.
I have never understood the glamour and the allure of Las Vegas to Christians. It is not a place of “spiritual sanctuary” where one can sin and God winks at it. What takes place in Vegas does not go unnoticed by God. The non-Christian labors only for himself. His mind is hostile to the things of God, and does not submit to righteousness. Hmmm, why is it that so many called Christian do not submit to righteousness either?
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A.W. Tozer said that the liberal is, “the man who has put his own eyes out.”
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“Don’t mess with something that isn’t bothering you.”
“There are three kinds of men: the ones that learn by reading; the few who learn by observation; the rest of them have to pee on the electric fence.”
“In a funeral parlor: Ask about our layaway plan.”