Don't Fear The Forecast

Many of us regularly check the weather forecast to find out what's in store in the "great outdoors". We want to know what to expect and how to prepare--whether to wear the heavy coat, the light coat or no coat; whether to carry the umbrella or wear the sunglasses. We count on the weather forecasters to be as accurate as possible so we can respond accordingly and not end up wearing flip flops and a sun hat during a torrential downpour.

Weather forecasts not only affect what we wear, but where we go and what we do. If thunderstorms are predicted--or even an extreme heatwave--we may decide to reschedule an outdoor event. Forecasts of heavy snow send people scrambling to the grocery stores to stock up on "must haves" like toilet paper and milk.

Ominous forecasts can occasionally strike fear in us, making us feel helpless and at the mercy of the elements. We forget, however, that regardless of how technologically advanced meterologists have become, it's still essentially a hit or miss when it comes to forecasting. Sometimes they're right on and other times way off.

That's because they are not in the driver's seat, they are actually following behind the driver trying to anticipate the driver's next move.

So it is with life. There are times when people will make predictions over our lives that we take to heart and use as the basis to make or revise important plans--"I don't know if you're going to be able to handle that...."; "You don't have the right education..."; "No one has ever done that before"; "Are you SURE you want to do that?"; "It'll never work!"; "Don't quit your day job!"
Some of these proved to be famous last words as many renowned athletes, musicians, authors and others boldly proved the naysayers' forecasts to be wrong.

I remember the first time I sang a particular song at an event where I worked. As the time drew near for me to sing, someone asked me, "Are you going to sing that song? You know there are a lot of high notes in it." Of course I was irritated at the not-so-subtle hint that I wouldn't be up to the task, but somehow, the peace of God that passes understanding came over me, and my response regarding the "high notes" was simply, "Yes, I know" accompanied by a smile.

And, with that, I proceeded to sing through the power of God, hitting every high note as well as all the other notes. It was truly a Memorex moment! (Younger readers, ask your parents about Memorex and Ella Fitzgerald ;-). That individual's forecast of gloom and doom had no power over me, because I refused to yield to it.

What about you? Are you more worried about what people think or what God thinks?

"How precious also are Thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!" (Psalm 139:17). "The thoughts of the righteous are right; but the counsels of the wicked are deceit" (Proverbs 15:26). "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end" (Jeremiah 29:11).

When you move forward in faith, don't expect everyone to understand--why should they when you may not even fully understand everything yourself? As much as we honor pioneers like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., don't forget that when he was alive, he faced his share of negative predictions from African Americans and others regarding what some viewed as fruitless "rabble rousing."

Thank God he didn't fear the forecast. For, even though he faced stormy days and nights, his efforts yielded much fruit-- fruit that remains. We, too, can live fruitful, history-making lives if we fill our minds with the promises of God and learn about the thoughts and plans that were laid out for us even before we were formed in the womb.

Let's not put our faith in the weatherman, let's have faith in the weathermaker so that, regardless of what happens in the middle, we can be sure that the beginning as well as the end of the story will say, "We win!" You won't find a more accurate forecast than that.

BNcouraged!

Rev. Karen

I Don't Feel Like It....

Have you ever said to yourself, "I just don't feel like it." What is "it"? "It" is whatever you've grown weary of doing or being--being overworked or being unemployed; waiting too long or being pushed forward too quickly; not enough to do or far too much to do; being lonely or needing time alone; trying and failing or failing to try....The list goes on.

Let's face it. Some days you just wish things were different, yet no matter what you do, nothing seems to change. At least, that's the way things appear.

As Christians, whenever we feel stuck in gear, remember that we have the ability to shift into a high gear that's higher than any man-made gear. The worse we feel in our hearts and minds, the more we need to feed our spirit with God's Word, for it is truly "sharper than any two-edged sword...dividing asunder of soul and spirit...." (Hebrews 4:12)

When our soul is heavy, we need to remember that we are body, soul AND spirit. Our spirit is always willing, even when our flesh is weak. God's Word is able to slice and dice through all of the heaviness in our souls and get down to the spirit where our power never ceases to be.

Have you ever thought that even on the cloudiest of days the sun is still shining? You may not be able to see it because of the clouds, but shining in all of its brilliance behind layer after layer of clouds is the sun. The sun NEVER ceases to shine, we just temporarily lose our ability to see it. A classic song promises that "The sun will come out, tomorrow...." No, the sun is already out today and every day.

So it is with the spirit of a man. We are created in the image of God and have His Spirit perpetually dwelling inside us. 1 Corinthians 2:10 tells us that, "...the Spirit searches...the deep things of God." The problem is that the "natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God...." (1 Corinthians 2:14). That means, sometimes, we are just not going to "feel" like it. Sometimes we can't see the sun, but we have to hold on to the truth that we know it is there.

Sometimes, we are not going to feel like reading God's Word. We are not going to feel like praying. We are not going to feel like exercising our faith. We are not going to feel like waiting on the Lord. But, recognizing that "it is the Spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing...." (John 6:63) we have to ignore our feelings and yield to the Spirit.

When you don't feel like praying, pray anyway. When you don't feel like reading the Bible, do it anyway--go online and open one of those inspirational e-mails, read a devotional. Do the opposite of what you feel.

You've heard the phrase, "don't fight the feeling." Well, do fight the feeling and start the feeding --on God's truth. Start an emergency infusion or even transfusion, if necessary. Before you know it, God's Word will start doing something inside of you that will make you feel like Popeye when he eats his spinach! That's what happened to me this morning after listening to Fred Hammond's song, "They That Wait." The tune is so infectious and uplifting that even though I was not in a good mood and didn't "feel" like perking up, the sound of Fred's melodious voice, the power behind the scripture he was singing, and John P. Kee's soulful vocal additions had me singing, swaying and smiling! My mood was no match for that awe-inspiring onslaught!

Try it. Get God's Word into your system by any means necessary. And, you know what? No matter how you're feeling, "I've got a feelin' everything's gonna be alright!"

BNcouraged!

Rev. Karen

THIS...IS..A...TEST....

"THIS...IS...A TEST. It is only a test. If this had been an actual emergency, you would have been instructed to...."

Do you remember when radio and television stations used to air messages similar to the one above? I don't recall the exact wording, but I do remember how the announcement would interrupt our regularly scheduled program with a jarring, piercing sound that seemed to go on forever, followed by a message informing us that we were experiencing a required testing of the Emergency Broadcast System.

When I look around and consider what my family and many others are experiencing now, all I can say is, "Thank God, this...is...a test. This is only a test!"

Tests, by definition are temporary. They have defined limits--either in the length of time allotted for the test or the actual length of the test itself. No test operates perpetually without end. Not even the SAT or its cousins. ( I can hear the hallelujahs!)

With that in mind, I encourage myself by remembering that times of testing, no matter how grueling, are only temporary. They are not the end of the story. They are actually key turning points in our life stories for they draw out of us whatever we've been filling ourselves with prior to the time of testing.

If you've been filling your life with faith and things like the fruit of the Spirit (e.g. love, joy, peace, patience--see Galatians 5:22-23), when you get in a tight squeeze, those are the things that will come out. It's nothing to brag about. It's actually an involuntary reaction.

On the other hand, if you've continued to fill your days with profanity, gossip, bitterness, drunkenness, rebellion etc. (see Galatians 5:19-21 for further examples) what do you expect to come out in times of crisis?

Some of you may say, "Sure, you make it sound so easy!" To that I say, "Well, don't make it seem so hard!" You understand how the principle works in the natural world--if you pour milk into a sponge and squeeze it, you will get (surprise) milk! When the squeeze is on, whatever is inside has no choice in the matter. It WILL come out.

Our brains, hearts and spirits are sponges, soaking up whatever we feed them. We don't necessarily control when they will be squeezed or how tight, but inevitably, over the course of life the pressure will mount. What we can control is what we put in them during the "pre-squeeze" season, and we would do best to draw from a life-giving source--of which I know of none better than Jesus Christ.

THIS...HAS BEEN A TEST...OF YOUR ETERNAL BELIEF SYSTEM...WE NOW RETURN YOU TO YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAM, ALREADY IN PROGRESS....

BNcouraged!

Rev. Karen

You Gotta Have Faith

Everyone believes in something. Even those who say they are athiests or agnostics believe in something. Perhaps they believe in the theory of evolution or the "big bang" theory (emphasis on the word, theory). It's interesting that someone can put their faith in things that hundreds of years after being "discovered" can still only be called theories, yet they couldn't fathom putting their faith in God.

God has given everyone a measure of faith. That's why scientists, scholars, researchers, believers and non-believers are forever searching for a higher power or deeper meaning to life. It's not a question of if you are a person of faith, but rather what or who you put your faith in. Just think about it. We are inherently people of faith. It's in our DNA.

It takes tremendous faith to believe that something randomly exploded in outer space and all of the pieces of that "something" randomly landed in such an intricate and orderly way as to produce planets, including one like our own that just randomly fell in place with random forces like gravity and randomly happened to support life in all of its complexities. Hmmm. Whenever I've seen or heard of demolitions or explosions of large structures, I don't recall anything coming out of that except ashes, rubble and sometimes death.

It also takes even more tremendous faith to believe that, in complete opposition to all of the rest of the observable forces of nature, man somehow evolved into a more complex creature. All around us, we see evidence of things changing horizontally--meaning changing in color, size, etc. but, essentially remaining the same, not radically changing in form. No one has recorded eyewitness accounts of tadpoles or frogs changing form, growing exponentially larger than their parents, walking upright and beginning to talk. All around we see that nothing living has dramatically changed from its original form so as to be completely uncrecognizable, which would have to be the case in order to accept the theory of evolution.

Since most people innately recognize that there is more to life than we can explain, I find it much more plausible to use the faith that is inherently within us to believe in the existence of a being (God) who is supremely intelligent and who deliberately put the universe and all that it contains in order. It's just too much of a stretch for me to believe that things like luck, chance or coindence--which are, by definition, random--somehow went against their core randomness and worked strategically and thoroughly enough to be behind the origin of life.

If things like evolution and "the big bang" are not random, then they must, by definition be deliberate. If they are deliberate, then somewhere there is a deliberator....

Think on these things and BNcouraged!

Rev. Karen