AMereServant

From Darkness to Light – loosing my mom

Posted on January 10, 2012 by amereservant

I have been off the map for a little while now, so much has happened.
The most life-changing of those would be my mom’s death, which took place November 23, 2011 at 12:05PM, the day before Thanksgiving.
She died from very aggressive breast cancer that metastasized all over her body (to put it short), only 5 days after I made it back to Arkansas to see her. The finality of her death brought an unexpected peace to us all since we had spent day-after-day uncertain of what each day would bring, but that was only momentary.

The weeks following her death brought clarity to what was now and what was then and her being gone for the rest of our lives set in at different times for each of us. And to my shame, I didn’t draw close my Lord Jesus Christ as it hit me since our relationship had been fragmented by many distractions.
It’s hard to explain, to put into words what I felt, what I went through, and I’m not even sure if it’s possible. But through an art used by my family, for at least a few generations, known as poetry, I’ve written a poem I’ll call “From Darkness to Light” in which I’ve depicted my journey the best I can.
Instead of hiding it from everyone but a few very close to me, I continue to live transparently, as ugly as that may be at times, so that hopefully you will have a better understanding and glimpse of just how incredible God truly is and the mighty power of Jesus’ great name.

From Darkness to Light

Death finally claimed her short-lived life,
mortally wounded, ending of strife.
Sun, warmth, and peace as uncertainty vanished,
shortly here and so quickly banished.
Darkness rolled in and disappeared the light,
away I was carried, too hurt to fight.

Reminded heavily of our inescapable fate,
the door crept shut, an impenetrable gate.
Feeling isolated, my family now broken,
Where were my friends, or so they had spoken?
I served, I loved, I shared in their pain,
now left wondering, “Was all in vain?”
No one understands, nor can possibly relate,
looming hooks of anger, tempting as bait.

Salt thrown into gashes running deep,
the only relief found after crying to sleep.
How did I get here, so desolate, so alone?
Little relief found in calling on the phone.
I heard His voice calling my name,
“Precious child, I still love you the same.”

“Where have you been since we cried last?”
“Just let it go, it’s in the past.”
“I’ve been waiting here, waiting on you,
waiting to restore you and make anew.”
“I know it hurts, cause it hurts Me too,
to see the pain your holding onto.”
As I looked up into His beautiful eyes,
His mercy and grace filled the skies.

As He lifted me to my feet,
“death I’ve conquered, pain has defeat”.
Reminded of what I had left behind,
how could I be so stupid, so dumb, and oh so blind?
It really mattered not as He had already forgot,
only seeing me as when with His blood I was bought.

A love once lost, yet now restored,
I sincerely rejoice in the glory of our Lord.
He healed her not, even though He is able,
but I’ll see her again at our Lord’s reunion table.
Although her memory will trigger a pain,
it is quickly healed by His great name.
Fixing my eyes on Jesus and the cross,
all will be restored and nothing a loss.
This is the promise we all have in Christ,
freely given, so perfectly priced.

by David Miles 1/10/2012

Posted in Jesus | Tagged 2011, Christ, death, forgiveness, Jesus, mom dying, poem, Thanksgiving | Leave a comment

Untitled Art by Abigail

Posted on November 13, 2011 by amereservant

My daughter Abigail LOVES to color and draw pictures, but the dilemma is that we only have a limited amount of space on our fridge and then you start running out of places to store it, so I decided to scan some of it and share it with everyone. So this is the beginning of Abby’s Art Gallery, which I figured would do just fine here on this site. Enjoy!

Posted in Abigails Art | Tagged Abigail, art, construction paper, drawing | Leave a comment

Christmas 1948 Guam – Order of Service

Posted on November 11, 2011 by amereservant

I recently got to looking through some old family photos I’ve inherited over the years and came across photos on my mom’s side of the family. In those photos were a couple of very old church orders-of-service, the handout thingy they give you when you enter.

It turns out they are from when my Grandpa, Daniel Adrian Slemko, was serving in the Army just shortly after World War II. He was stationed in Guam (I have no idea how long) and managed to hang on to a few paper articles that have survived the years. The one I have scanned and converted into a searchable PDF file is from Christmas 1948. It’s pretty neat and I figured I’d share it so everyone else who’s intrigued by such things can have a look, so enjoy!

Christmas 1948 Guam – Church Service Outline.pdf

Posted in Family | Tagged 1948, Christmas, church, document, Guam, World War II | Leave a comment

WordPress 3.0+ Custom Widgets How-to

Posted on September 29, 2011 by amereservant

After recently trying to figure out how to make a custom widget/widget template for a theme I’m working on, I discovered that it was difficult to find good information that wasn’t just explaining how to make your theme widget-ready etc.

Wait a second …. this is really off topic isn’t it? Well, compared to what I have used this blog for so far, yeah, it is. But there’s times I’d like to share things other than topics regarding my faith and as a mere servant, this seems suitable to place them here.

Overview to Widgets and This Article

I feel it necessary to go ahead and clarify what this is about so if it’s not what you’re looking for, I won’t waste any more of your time.
My goal is to first very briefly explain enabling widgets via your theme’s code and then how to make your own custom Widget. If that’s what you’re here for, then you most likely found the right place.

A place to put the Widgets – Showing them in your theme

The first step is adding what WordPress refers to as a Sidebar, which is more less a “bin” that you can add various widgets to show in your theme. There’s two functions you can use to do this:
register_sidebar() - For adding a single sidebar.
register_sidebars() – For adding multiple sidebars.

Since there’s plenty of information on how to use these, including the tutorial links under the Resources Section of the register_sidebar() page, I’ll leave it at that.

Make a custom widget – A working example

So now we get down to the nitty gritty….
I found This Example Code by Jonathon Byrd that offers two different examples of adding/creating a custom widget for use and we’re going to use it since I thought it made great example code.
As I mentioned, there’s two different example files included and only one is needed, so we’ll start with the one he named QuickWidget.php.

Quick and Easy Custom Widget

Copy the file QuickWidget.php to your theme’s directory, then in your functions.php file add the following:

 <?php

// Include example widget
require 'QuickWidget.php';

Now if you go to Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress Administrator panel (the theme must be enabled!), you should see a widget named Document Widget with the description A Foo Widget with the rest of the available widgets.

Now you can tinker with the QuickWidget.php file and make your custom widget! This gives you a working template to work with so you can test your changes and so forth.

Master custom Widget class

The second file named MasterWidget.php takes a little more of an advanced approach by creating a widget “framework” so that adding/customizing one or more widgets is as easy as possible. This doesn’t just work straight-out-of-the-box like the previous one and we need to take a couple of extra steps, but it’s still simple so here we go…

Like with the above file, we have to copy it to our theme’s directory and then include it in our functions.php file. So copy the MasterWidget.php file to your theme’s base directory and then add the following to your functions.php file (Keep it open, we’ve got more work to do in a second…):

<?php

// Include custom widget class
require 'MasterWidget.php';

Now in the MasterWidget.php file, copy the following section of code (currently lines 41-95 in MasterWidget.php) and paste it either the bottom of your MasterWidget.php file or add it to the functions.php file like such:

<?php

// Include custom widget class
require 'MasterWidget.php';

//build an array of settings
$docWidget = array(
	'id' => 'first-custom-widget',	//make sure that this is unique
	'title' => 'aaaFirst Widget',
	'classname' => 'st-custom-wi',
	'do_wrapper' => true,
	'show_view' => 'document_widget_view',
	'fields' => array(
		array(
			'name' => 'Title',
			'desc' => '',
			'id' => 'title',
			'type' => 'text',
			'std' => ''
		),
		array(
			'name' => 'Textarea',
			'desc' => 'Enter big text here',
			'id' => 'textarea_id',
			'type' => 'textarea',
			'std' => 'Default value 2'
		),
		array(
			'name' => 'Select box',
			'id' => 'select_id',
			'type' => 'select',
			'options' => array('Option 1', 'Option 2', 'Option 3')
		),
		array(
			'name' => 'Radio',
			'id' => 'radio_id',
			'type' => 'radio',
			'options' => array(
				array('name' => 'Name 1', 'value' => 'Value 1'),
				array('name' => 'Name 2', 'value' => 'Value 2')
			)
		),
		array(
			'name' => 'Checkbox',
			'id' => 'checkbox_id',
			'type' => 'checkbox'
		),
	)
);

//register this widget
register_master_widget($docWidget);

function document_widget_view( $args )
{
	extract($args);
	?>
	the view for my widget
	<?php
}

After saving your changes, go to Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress Administrator panel (the theme must be enabled!), you should see a widget named aaaFirst Widget with the description aaaFirst Widget with the rest of the available widgets.

If you drag it/add it to a sidebar, you can expand it and see the widget fields that were created by the ‘fields’ array in our $docWidget array. This is as far as I’m taking you in this tutorial on creating the custom widget, but now that you have a working example, play with the input array values and you’ll have your own customized widget in no time!

Custom WordPress Widget - Admin Panel Preview

Spiritual Drought – How Do We Overcome It?

Posted on June 28, 2011 by amereservant

Spiritual Drought Spiritual “dryness” or “drought” plagues every Christian at some point or another in our walk with Christ.
The draw of our worldly desires are always present and sometimes they overwhelm us, even though they shouldn’t. I’ve had many spells of drought throughout my life and up until a few years ago, I would eventually give up because the struggle to find my way back to God just seemed so far away and unattainable.

Here’s a Biblical outline I hope helps you to overcome these dry spells and reclaiming that close relationship with our best friend, our Lord, our God.

We must have the proper assessment value

One of the things that has convicted me the most is my value of my relationship with God during a drought. Probably one of the single most reasons for a drought even occurring is we begin forgetting how priceless that relationship is and sometimes we need to reassess it.

The kingdom of heaven is like a treasure hidden in the field, which a man found and hid again; and from joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.
Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking fine pearls, and upon finding one pearl of great value, he went and sold all that he had and bought it.
Matthew 13:44-45

Jesus gives us the assessment value in these verses, but we must take hold of it and believe it ourselves. Once we truly believe God is this valuable, we realize that we must at all costs seek Him first just as in the parable the man sold all he had to buy the field. This doesn’t necessarily mean we must sell all we own to follow God, but we must be willing to do away with ANYTHING that stands between us and Him.
To further assess the value, Jesus said:

He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. Matthew 10:37 NASB

We Must Admit Fault

I can’t count how many times I’ve accused Satan of “being after me” or “really getting me down” during a season of dryness. But the truth is, there’s a very very slim possibility Satan is the one I’m battling. We give him way too much credit. He’s no omni-presence, so he can’t be in more than one place at the same time, therefore he’s far more likely to be focused on high-priority targets that cause far more damage in the fallout than in an individual with lesser social significance.
Getting a pastor/president/etc. to mess up impacts a whole congregation of people as to where an individual only impacts those immediately around them.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. James 1:14 ESV

It’s our own fault and our battle against our fleshly (human) desires and not Satan attacking us 99.9% of the time. We must be willing a accept and admit our own faults instead of blaming them on the bad guy, otherwise we will fail to grasp hold of true repentance.

Prayer – Even Though We Don’t Feel Like It

This is really hard to do when praying feels so empty. It’s easy for me to convince myself it’s just not worth it since I’m not feeling a desire to do so and that God surely doesn’t care to hear my prayers since I’ve ignored our relationship. This couldn’t be further from the truth.

As I was getting ready for the day this morning, a thought came to me regarding this… have you ever had a really close relationship with a friend or family member, then perhaps one of you move away or just grow distant because you get caught up in life and then it’s almost as if you’ve become strangers? How do you re-establish that relationship? By having conversations and catching up on what all has been going on.

The same thing applies with our relationship to God. Sometimes we’ve lost our close relationship because we ceased communication with Him and we need to re-establish that relationship by communicating with Him again. Prayer is how we do this. Prayer is our line of communication with God and it should be our delight to go before the God of the universe and know He hears our prayers and loves it when we seek Him for our every need.

Fasting – The “Unpopular” Action

“Even now,” declares the Lord, “return to me with all your heart, with fasting and weeping and mourning.” Joel 2:12 NASB

It humors me how this one gets skimmed over and VERY rarely emphasized. We don’t fail to mention prayer and so forth, but fasting??? After all, I sure don’t like missing meals even though my slim figure might lead one to believe otherwise. But one of the practices of a follower of Christ IS fasting.

It’s hard to fast and not be in constant remembrance of why your fasting, which keeps your mind continually focused on God. Fasting alone does not magically repair your relationship, but it does have a powerful role in restoring your spirit and allowing the Holly Spirit to work since one of the key elements to fasting is weakening your body (flesh). By weakening the flesh, it makes it less prone to get in the way of His Holy Spirit renewing you.
For more information on fasting, I highly recommend Scott Harness’s blog posts: Blog Entry 1 – Fasting, Blog Entry 2 – Fasting, Blog Entry 3 – Daniel Fasted, Blog Entry 4 – Why I Fast.

Repentance – Turning Away From Our Failure

We must repent for our drought, our disobedience. To me, the word repent was one of those “Biblical Terms”, which means I didn’t really understand it since it’s not one we use on a regular basis in our society. But it means we must find a strong desire to stay away from that which we are repenting for and strive to keep from doing it again.

Think of someone who is sincere on quitting alcohol. If they sincerely want to quit (repent), they must do whatever it takes to keep away from temptation and it may even mean them giving up their favorite BBQ place because the advertisements and scent of alcohol in the air will taunt them and tempt them to relapse and have “just one drink”. Same goes with us and something we are repenting of, we must fight to stay away from it and that brings me to the last point ….

It Takes Discipline

The hinge pin to avoiding spiritual drought is self-discipline.

I discipline my body like an athlete, training it to do what it should. Otherwise, I fear that after preaching to others I myself might be disqualified. 1 Corinthians 9:27 NLT

Paul was fully aware of his struggle with his own temptations and knew what it took to keep focused on Jesus Christ. There are so many trials in our lives that make it hard to keep us focused and it takes us disciplining ourselves to endure those trials and persevere.

The problem is I don’t always remain self-disciplined and will start to be lenient on not making the time each day to spend with God in His Word and in prayer. This is where the downward spiral always begins. It’s not easy by any means, but we must also learn to forgive ourselves when we’ve fallen into a drought and when we fail to come out of it in the amount of time we thought it should take.

Remember, God is just and willing to forgive us therefore we must be willing to forgive ourselves which can be hard when we’ve repeatedly failed and feel like we’re just a huge failure. Jesus explains this in Matthew 18:21-22:

²¹Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” ²²Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven. Matthew 18:21-22 ESV

Closing Thoughts

I hope with these different points, you can find your way out of a spiritual drought. These are the steps I usually take that have helped me. Sometimes it just takes us reminding ourselves why and how important God is in our lives and how insignificant everything else really is. We forget the value of the treasure or pearl and what all we once gave to obtain it. God gave everything when He gave His Son Jesus Christ for us. We must regain our focus and reclaim our joy so we can continue to live a life that’s truly worth living.

Posted in Jesus | Tagged Christ, discipline, drought, dryness, fasting, Jesus, prayer, return, spiritual | Leave a comment

Discipleship: Are you embracing opportunities or blowing them off?

Posted on June 16, 2011 by amereservant

I’ve had this topic on my mind for the past several days and after hearing someone share how this applied to them, I decided to go ahead and write about it.
As a follower of Christ, we are suppose to be making disciples, but I think we often miss the meaning of this. I know I have missed opportunities in the past to pour into someone because I was too distracted by other things. I can’t help but wonder what the effects are and what we will have to answer for.

A Leaderless Generation

Most of us have probably heard of the term “Church Leadership“. This is suppose to reference those who are leaders within the church, those disciplining others. The problem is many of those leaders are distracted by so many other things that we’re not seeing our disciples or brushing them off for other interests.
A Christian who’s passionate about God is like a sponge, ready to soak up and learn more about our incredible Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But many of us have forgotten the need to pour into their lives and lead them in the way they should go. We’ve often abandoned them to figure it out on their own by recommending books or other resources because we’ve got another conversation we’d rather be having with someone else or something else we’d rather be doing. After all, how we played those 18 holes of golf IS important to share or the Season Finale of our favorite show can’t be missed and if they’d just go read their Bibles, they’d find the answers to the redundant questions they’re asking.

Maybe we feel threatened by the fact the “on-fire” Christian makes us look bad and their relationship with God is much closer than our own, so in a ditch effort to not be discovered, it’s easier to blow them off than engage them. After all, aren’t leaders suppose to be ahead or more on-point than students? How embarrassing would it be if we as leaders were to confess that we aren’t at a point in our walk with Christ to disciple and/or help them? It’s much easier to fake it and pretend we’ve got it together and avoid the uncomfortable conversations and switch it to something secular, right?

Passion-less Followers

After being blown off and turned away so many times, we as Christians eventually reach a point of discouragement and loose our passion in following Jesus. It’s hard for us to struggle to find our purpose, answers, and understanding on our own when the leaders we’ve reached out to almost act as if it’s a bother or inconvenience for them to help us. In turn, we begin to loose our dedication to God and drift away since it’s too hard. After several seasons of this in our lives, many of us settle for something far less than what God truly desired for our lives because discouragement has warped the fullness and limitless potential God has for us.
A few of us will find the strength to keep on trying despite past let-downs, but many will give up and become passion-less followers of Christ.
The generation that is going to make up the church majority in a few short years will struggle to even see a reason or purpose for it outside of it being a social group to go and pretend we aren’t screwed up and share what we’ve done for the past week since we last met. Following Jesus and living lives dedicated to Him won’t be the primary focus because that will become a difficult and impossible goal since no one took the time to show us what it even looks like and that it IS achievable.

The Heart Of The Matter

It always comes back to a heart issue. We start loving activities, things, and our secular lives more than we love people. If we love God, then we will love what God loves. We share His priorities by making them our priorities. When we live our lives focused on Him and completely surrendered to His will, we are able to see what He sees and share our passion with those who are seeking Him.

“These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” Matthew 15:8 NLT

One day we all will stand before God and answer for what we’ve spent our lives doing. What will you say when He points out all of the people He sent for you to disciple and be a servant to and you were too busy catching up on the latest scores when someone was hungry for His truth?
Will the answer you give Him be acceptable or be to your shame?

Posted in Jesus | Tagged Christian, disciple, God, Jesus, leadership, passion | 1 Comment

The Story of Ananias and Sapphira

Posted on June 15, 2011 by amereservant

This is a great animated video of the story of Ananias and Sapphira.

Dan Stevers, the creator of this video, has this movie as well as others on his website http://www.danstevers.com/ available for purchase to be used in your church.

Posted in Church | Tagged Ananias, animated, Sapphira, video | Leave a comment

When it’s time to move out of the way

Posted on June 3, 2011 by amereservant

After reading the first 3 chapters of the book of John, something stood out to me.
If you read John 1:35-37, you will first see John’s 2 disciples that were with him get up and follow Jesus.
While this seems like no big deal when you read it, after all, John WAS there to prepare the way of the Lord, we forget the human factor as if John himself was supernatural.

John was indeed an extraordinarily man, but he was still human and he just watched two of his disciples walk away and follow Jesus. Anyone who has discipled someone knows the enormous amount of time, energy, and effort that goes into discipling someone and how it is no small matter. John clearly practiced fasting and there’s no doubt he most likely had fasted for his disciples on many occasions and spent a lot of time in prayer for them.

From what I can tell about John, he was well invested into his disciples. Then one day, Jesus comes walking up out of nowhere and the two guys John had poured so much into quickly leave him to follow Jesus. In John 3:26, John’s disciples come to him and question him regarding the growing number of people that were following Jesus instead of John.
John’s response to them is nothing short of amazing, especially in John 3:30.

He must increase, I must decrease

John knew what his purpose was and knew when it was time to step aside. He also realized how little it had to do with him and how much it had to do with Jesus. Instead of trying to keep hold of what he had worked so hard on, he knew it was time to let someone else take the lead, which in his case happens to be Jesus.
John had a pretty large following from what I understand and he watched that change when Jesus steps into the picture and begins His ministry. I think it’s safe to assume John may have privately dealt with a little bit of jealousy. After all, have you ever worked hard at a job and then watched as someone else came and took over what you had worked so hard to establish?

Even when you know it’s the right thing, we do have a hard time letting it go most of the time and I don’t think John was an exception, he just handled it correctly and knew what had to happen.

Replacing Yourself

Many times in discipleship, we find ourselves training our replacement. Jesus did that very thing with His 12 disciples. Jesus knew He wasn’t going to live here on earth forever and we should realize the same thing. We’re not guaranteed tomorrow and if the role we hold is important, we should be looking for our replacement and equipping them to take on that task.

The best example of this I personally know of is my father-in-law. In 1983, just after my wife was born, they moved to Costa Rica as he pursued his calling as a missionary. They loved the time there and God blessed my father-in-law’s work, so much so that he ended up working himself right out of a job.
He had trained up teams there to where he had replaced himself and wasn’t really needed there anymore. They eventually moved back to the United States, leaving everything they had come to know for over more than a decade behind. But this lead him to become the missions director for Latin America, which gave him a new job of planting and mentoring churches all throughout North and South America and not just in Costa Rica.

I think about how different the many lives he has impacted, including my own, would be if he had chosen to cling to the one church there in Costa Rica. I wouldn’t have ever met my wife if they had stayed in Costa Rica and wouldn’t have met an inspirational guy quite like him.
There’s no doubt he poured out a lot into building up the first church he served there in Costa Rica and it was terribly difficult for them to leave such a beautiful place, but by letting go and moving out of the way, his work multiplied in ways it never could have if he had stayed there clinging on to one small role. Sometimes we have to dream and think big to see the bigger picture and realize that we can become a hindrance to what God is wanting to do through us if we get stuck clinging to the smaller things that seem so big to us at that point.

It’s not easy letting go

When you have a role and it gives you purpose and a feeling of importance, it’s though letting it go. The reality is that when you move on to another position, you may not even be recognized or known of by those you serve and the relationships you had built must all be formed with new people.
I’ve seen this a lot myself lately since we recently moved to another state. The friends I had whom have been of great encouragement to me and I had spent time investing in them I no longer had here with me. I am in a place where I must now establish new relationships and that’s not easy since it takes time and effort.

But when we look at Paul and his disciples as an example and how, even though it broke his heart and theirs when he had to go, they were able to reach many more people than if they had just stayed with a single church clinging to the people and the ministries they served in there.
We must know that one day we will all be re-united again with an eternity to spend together and that we have to know if and when it’s time to move out of the way of someone else God has called to take our place so they can serve Him where He’s called them to.
Some roles we hold are meant for a season, sometimes to grow and test us, and when God finds us faithful in what He’s given us to do, He’ll often give us more.

Posted in Church, Jesus | Tagged Jesus, John, ministry, move, of, out, Paul, the, way | Leave a comment

Jesus is coming soon, are you excited?

Posted on May 19, 2011 by amereservant

Last night while I was spending time in reflection and prayer with God, I began to think about how relaxed I’ve been about my disobedience to God so many times in my life.

I also have spent a lot of time in thought on Philippians 2:12:

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling;

Why would Peter add “with fear and trembling” I asked myself….

He’s coming soon, should you be so anxious?

This should be a no-brainer, but it occurred to me that if He came back today, it wouldn’t be something the majority of us would be able to rejoice over. What we forget is Jesus isn’t a big squishy teddy bear coming back to just love and hug on us. This is how we choose to think of Him, but He said something quite different in His word in several of the parables He spoke.

Slacking on the job

⁴² “Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. ⁴³ “But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming, he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into.

⁴⁴ “For this reason you also must be ready; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.
⁴⁵ “Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? ⁴⁶ “Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes. ⁴⁷ “Truly I say to you that he will put him in charge of all his possessions. ⁴⁸ “But if that evil slave says in his heart, ‘My master is not coming for a long time,’ ⁴⁹ and begins to beat his fellow slaves and eat and drink with drunkards; ⁵⁰ the master of that slave will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour which he does not know, ⁵¹ and will cut him in pieces and assign him a place with the hypocrites; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Matthew 24:44-51 NASB

If you have ever slacked off at work or know of someone that has, then the boss suddenly returned to see what has been going on, you know it’s not a pretty sight. This is especially true when you were left with something specific he really wanted done and you instead decided to go do your own thing, say perhaps go shopping, watch a movie, etc. while at work.
Most of us know this would almost certainly mean we’d be fired and wouldn’t dare expect the boss to be happy about what he saw when he returned.

So why do we think Jesus’ return is going to be a celebration when He’ll very likely catch many of us slacking on the job? How many of us will have done nothing or very little work despite the fact He’s given us YEARS to get it done?
This is where the “fear and trembling“ part in Philippians 2:12 makes a lot of sense to me. I know I do not want Him coming back and finding me filled with self-indulgence and taking the work He’s given me to do with little regard. I believe where we all mess up is by not having a proper reverence for Jesus. It’s almost like we think of Him like the push-over boss that might be a little upset, but really isn’t going to do anything about it. That couldn’t be further from the truth.

It’s time to clock-in

I don’t want anyone to mistake what I say, because I certainly don’t believe we are under God’s constant condemnation. I do know and understand His love, mercy, and grace and it’s the reason why our slacking off hasn’t cost us our lives yet. God has a standard and your freedom to carry out what He’s given you to do has come at a very high price, therefore it shouldn’t be taken so lightly.

The time to get started is NOW! Jesus puts it clearly in Matthew 13:44-50. We should be selling out to what God has for us to do. Many of us need to get rid of the un-biblical junk we treasure in our lives, whether it be hobbies, sports, TV, possessions, relationships, and get focused. God is a jealous God and anything that competes with Him for your heart, your time, and your loyalty needs to be confronted.

The time is now. The Lord is coming! The question is, are you ready?

Posted in Jesus | Tagged boss, coming, Jesus, job, return, slacking | Leave a comment

God wants your heart, not credit

Posted on May 17, 2011 by amereservant

⁷ “You hypocrites, righly did Isaiah prophesy of you:

⁸ ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS,
BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.
⁹ ‘BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME,
TEACHING AS DOCTRINES THE PRECEPTS OF MEN.’” Matthew 15:7-9 NASB

This particular passage has deeply convicted me in my life and it’s one I regularly ask myself “Does this apply to me now?“.
A few years ago, I was quick to give God credit for my talents as a photographer when people would compliment me on my photos, but my heart was far from Him. I knew where my ability to take some really amazing photos had come from and not for one second was I going to kid myself by thinking it was my own ability.

But when it came down to me honestly asking myself ”Is God my heart’s one desire?“, the answer was “No“. I went to church every Sunday, listened to Christian music all of the time, and did my best to live a life of good morals, but the world and people around me as well as my possessions took my heart captive and the time I truly spent with God was so little it wasn’t even worth mentioning. I spent more time brushing my teeth each week than I did with God.

After being patient, merciful, and forgiving towards my ignorance for a long while, God finally let it all crumble down around me and my life got turned upside down. I lost my dream job, being self-employed, and was left in the mess of my bad decisions plaguing me daily for quite some time. It didn’t take long for me to see the reason for it all either, for I knew my heart and I knew what God expected from me, but I had chose to live contrary to His standards and it cost me dearly.

What I have learned from it is this …. God want’s your heart, not your credit. He doesn’t want you to listen to/sing Christian music, attend church, and be a person of good morals when your heart is far from Him. As verse 9 says, “BUT IN VAIN DO THEY WORSHIP ME, …”, that sort of living is vanity and in no way does it bring God glory or honor, but instead it disgusts Him.
So from that, I’ve learned to continually inventory my heart and ask myself if what I’m doing, whether it be serving in a church or going throughout my everyday life, “Does God have my heart?“.

If not, I have learned to make myself drop whatever it is that’s consuming my time and being a distraction and go seek Him in His word and in prayer so my heart will be restored.
My prayer is this, and I hope you will find it to be a treasure as well:

“Create in me a clean heart, O God, And renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Psalm 51:10 NASB

Posted in Jesus | Tagged doctrines, heart, Jesus, vain, worship | Leave a comment