CHALLENGED

CHALLENGED

Friday, September 6, 2019

  Were childhood experiences involving those frightening words “Go on, I double-dog dare you!” a part of God’s prep schooling? Strongly suspect so, don’t know for sure, but will be asking soon enough.

  We don’t need a psychotherapist to help us delve into why we don’t like challenges not of our choosing or agreement; we do love flowery beds of ease free of controversy. (Amos 6:1-14)

  Something I know helped prepare me was a decades old book on hot potatoes that far too many ministers would not touch.

  By preparation I don’t mean I believe God trained or wants me to be a gleeful pot stirrer, but that when He directs or a fellow challenges with question, I am not in cowardly fashion to displeasure my Lord though it may displease my fellows.

  Looking to His Word, I share that which has and continues to speak to my heart on the matter.

Ecclesiastes 5:4 When you vow a vow to God, do not wait to pay it. For He has no pleasure in fools. Pay that which you have vowed.

Hebrews 10:35 Therefore do not cast away your confidence, which has great recompense of reward.

John GW 14:27 "I'm leaving you peace. I'm giving you my peace. I don't give you the kind of peace that the world gives. So don't be troubled or cowardly.

2Timothy GW 1:7 God didn't give us a cowardly spirit but a spirit of power, love, and good judgment.

Hebrews 10:36-39 For you have need of patience, so that after you have done the will of God you might receive the promise. For "yet a little while, and He who shall come will come and will not delay." Now, "the Just shall live by faith. But if he draws back, My soul shall have no pleasure in him." But we are not of those withdrawing to destruction, but of those who believe to the preserving of the soul.

  In closing today’s written words, but not the thought, I double-dog dare you to live in God’s peace, not the world’s peace. 

EBB4