Pastor Jay //

This post is a reprint (permission granted) of Dr. Mike Proud’s daily devotional from July 16, 2009. He pastors the Arbor Christian Fellowship (SBC) in Lake Forest, California. I was encouraged by his treatment of commitment from the passage in Revelation 3:7-13. I encourage you to read the passage and apply the teaching.

“No Easy Way Out”

The words, “I’m in it for the long haul” don’t seem to be heard as often today as they once were. Could it be that we have a greater propensity to view things as temporary and replaceable, rather than permanent and fixable? For instance, I don’t think anyone enters the job market today expecting they will work all their lives for one company, or even in just one profession. However, people used to have that expectation. Products we purchase today also seem to be viewed as temporary. Either we do not expect a product to last very long, or we expect it to become obsolete with the discovery of better technology. In either case we are quick to trade in or trade up. Yet, the generation coming out of the great depression, up to and through WW II, squeezed every last ounce of life out of what they had. They expected what they had to last, and if it didn’t, they had it fixed rather than throwing it away. Is it because we have more expendable income today that these things are so, or is it simply a different philosophy for living? Perhaps it is more the latter than the former.

But what we must do is ask ourselves, “What has this philosophy of exchange and discard as opposed to retain and repair really cost us?” One casualty seems to be our ability to understand that some things just take hard work and time. We have grown impatient. We want to see results immediately or we are ready to move on. While this trait may serve us well in being able to let go of things that are ineffective in search of better strategies, it can also cause us harm in the area of spiritual maturity and growth.

In our text for this morning the Lord commended the church in Philadelphia for their endurance and faithful perseverance to God’s Word. They had come under attack for their commitment to Christ, but they had not given up. Yet, the word which the Lord offered them for their future was encouragement to hold on longer, “I am coming quickly; hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown.” In other words, more conflict was coming their way, but the Lord would see them through. There was no promise of instant gratification here, only the challenge to stand firm in the strength of the Lord.

For a world whose motto is, “It will cost more to fix it than replace it,” something has been lost. Our eagerness to set time limits for improvement has brought us to see many things as expendable. Relationships which are damaged are discarded and replaced. It is believed to be better to move on than to invest the energy in making something bad, work once again. And while our eyes are set on the end result, we have sacrificed the process which will inevitably make us stronger. We forget the garden grows in beauty only after we have toiled in preparing the soil. It is the process of endurance and patience which enables us to truly appreciate what hard work has achieved. Only then does the end result have lasting meaning to us because it is something we have birthed. It is true that what we strive for or what we labor at carries more meaning and value than what we have been handed.

While we would all love to be deep and spiritually mature in an instant, it is to our benefit that God has not just given us that prayer. For, only by clinging, and striving, and wrestling, and laboring in God’s field will we truly appreciate the fruit which is produced in our lives. The Christian life is not developed in a month or a twelve week study, it takes a lifetime. IT TAKES A LIFETIME! Do not be discouraged by setbacks, for even in that, God is creating and developing you into something which will last for eternity. Trust in the Lord. For though the road may be bumpy, you are benefitting from the journey.

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Mike has expressed what may be the root of so many problems that we face today. I find this “throw-away” attitude especially prevalent in marriages - even marriages in the church. Promises are made and then discarded. I pray that we can return to a day where commitments are made and are binding.

Pictured: One baby of the three sets of twins born in our church last year.

It was July 25, 1997. The delivery process had been long and late into the night. We were so tired, but so excited about the new person in our family - our first-born. I had come into the room and our son was with us looking off into the distance. As I began to talk with Michele, he slowly turned his head in my direction and began looking for me. He recognized my voice! So many times before he was born I had talked to him in the womb. I read stories. We talked to him and called him by name. Now he was in the room and he heard a familiar voice.

Recently, there have been some studies that have been gaining some attention. The Washington Times reported today on a study indicating that fetuses have memory. They used sounds that the baby-in-the-womb could hear and observed their reactions. Then over time, the babies would exhibit “habituation” by reacting less to the familiar sound. They became accustomed to it. Later, when exposed to the sounds again, habituation occurred more rapidly which indicated that they had retained a memory of the previous habituation. Again, we are reminded that life does not begin at birth, but at conception.

In a recent documentary shown on PBS called The Music Instinct: Science & Song showed the impact of music on babies in-vetro. In Chuck Colson’s Breakpoint article entitled “Music In Utero” he explains that the documentary had actual footage of a baby hearing it’s mother’s voice from within the womb and smiling.

May God help us to recognize life in the womb just as my child recognized me from the womb.

Did not He who made me in the womb make them? Did not the same One fashion us in the womb? (Job 31:15 NKJ)

Okay, this is pretty funny to me. Today, I noticed on facebook that someone noticed my father’s picture in the Baptist Standard (Texas newspaper). I went online to see if it would there also and didn’t see anything. Then I realized that his face was right at the top of the page BIG AS DALLAS in a video. Funnier still - I don’t know yet whether he knows its there! Here is the video:

I announced to the church this evening that I would post the link to the online video of the sermon that I played tonight from the SBC Pastor’s Conference in Louisville, KY this year. Unfortunately this video had to be removed because of copyright privileges. However, the following link will allow you to see the message when it comes available along with two other VERY powerful messages. I highly recommend that you watch the Francis Chan sermon.

Here is the link.