22 October 2008


BETRAYAL OR LOYALTY?

I want to ask you a question: “This past week, did you BETRAY God with your thoughts, with your words, or with your actions? … OR did you stay LOYAL to God with your thoughts, with your words, or with your actions?”

ZECHARIAH 4:10 (NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE)
10 do not despise the days of small things.

SONG OF SOLOMON 2:15 (NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE)
15 it’s the little foxes that spoil the vines.

Staying LOYAL, or taking the route of BETRAYAL … both ways of living involve you and me making “choices”. And all the steps of our faith (those we take FORWARD, and those we take BACKWARD) begin with small choices, small steps, and small course deviations. ZECHARIAH 4:10 challenges us through the life and words of this Old Testament Minor Prophet to “not despise the days of small things.

In SONG OF SOLOMON 2:15, King Solomon tells us that in a vineyard, “it’s the little foxes that spoil the vines” – in other words, that when we don't take the time and effort to heed THE SMALL THINGS IN LIFE, we’ll lose THE IMPORTANT THINGS IN LIFE.

So do you see how come you and I need Jesus to help us as we make all the day-to-day choices of our lives? And do you see how foolish it is to try and live life on our own! Because without Jesus at the center of our lives … without us submitting to His leadership in our lives … we’ll value the wrong things and ignore the right things – and our lives will end up off course in ways we’d never imagine.


It’s been said that filmmaker Walt Disney
was ruthless in cutting anything that got
in the way of a movie’s pacing. The story is
told that Ward Kimball, one of the animators
for Disney’s 1937 classic, Snow White, worked
240 days on a 4 ½ minute sequence in
which the dwarfs made soup for Snow White
and almost destroyed the kitchen in the process.
While viewing previews of the film Walt thought
that this scene Kimball had worked so hard
on was funny … but he eventually decided the
scene slowed down the overall flow of
the picture, and so he cut it out.


When the film of your life is shown, will it be as great as it might have been? A lot will depend on how many “good things” we made the choice to eliminate, in order to make way for the “great things” God wants to do through us. Godspeed.

read.think.pray.live.

Gregg

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