Month: August 2016

Our battles are first won or lost in the secret places of our will in God’s presence, never in full view of the world.
Oswald Chambers

Quietly trust yourself to Christ your Lord and if anybody asks why you believe as you do, be ready to tell him, and do it in a gentle and respectful way.
1 Peter 3:15
The Living Bible

Go measure the heavens with your span;
go weigh the mountains in the scales;
go take the ocean’s water and calculate each drop;
go count the sand upon the sea’s wide shore;
and when you have accomplished all of this,
then you can tell how much He loves you!
He has loved you long!
He has loved you well!
He will love you forever!
C. H. Spurgeon

Spend your time in nothing you know must be repented of; in nothing on which you might not pray the blessing of God; in nothing which you could not review with a quiet conscience on your dying bed; in nothing which you might not safely and properly be found doing if death should surprise you in the act.
J. Sidlow Baxter

The wicked flee when no one pursues; but the righteous are bold as a lion.
Proverbs 28:1
The Revised Standard Version

Joy is the direct result of having God’s perspective on our daily lives and the effect of loving our Lord enough to obey His commands and trust His promises.
Bill Bright

People who work hard sleep well, whether they eat little or much.  But the rich seldom get a good night’s sleep.
Ecclesiastes 5:12
The New Living Bible

Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.
Karl Barth (His summation of his enormous knowledge of theology)

Special Note from Eric: Today’s message marks the last in this series that I started at the beginning of the year. If you’ve been enjoying these messages, you’ll be glad to know I’m just putting the finishing touches on a book I’ve created containing all twenty messages which I’m calling, “Water From My Well: Finding God in the Midst of Life, Love and Loneliness.” I hope to have it available later this week so you can reread these messages anytime or share them with friends! I’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready. (My daughter Makari has just finished painting a picture for the cover; I thought you’d like to see a preview!)

GOING DEEPER
by Eric Elder
The Ranch
 
Since the beginning of the year, I’ve shared nineteen messages with you on a variety of topics, from goal-setting and goal-keeping to keeping your feet forward and your knees bent so you don’t get sideswiped by the boulders in your life. Today I’d like to share one more message with you in this series, a message I believe will help each of us go deeper in our walks with God than we’ve ever gone before.
Before I started this series, I was telling a friend that there were some aspects of my walk with God where I felt like I had hit bedrock. I feel like I had dug as deep as I could, and there was no further I could go. If I tried digging any further, my shovel would just clank against the rock,  over and over again.
I wasn’t frustrated by this feeling, however. In fact, I was quite comfortable to rest right where I was!
But my friend told me about a character in a movie who was running through a desert when all of a sudden the ground beneath him started to give way. A huge hole opened up, revealing a rushing river below. As the ground gave way, the character jumped into the newly opened hole and into the rushing river underground, taking took him further and deeper than he had ever gone before.
My friend saw me as that character in the movie, and couldn’t help but believe that there was a rushing river beneath my feet as well that God wanted me to jump into.
I was intrigued by the idea, but I didn’t know what to do about it. The ground beneath me was seemingly impenetrable. What else could I do?
But one of the things I’ve also been doing to do this year is trying to grow in my own personal relationship with God. For the past few months especially, I’ve been trying to deliberately focus on what my unique relationship with Him looks like, not superimposing onto it what other people’s relationships with Him look like.
Knowing that this was on my heart, and combining it with the vision of the idea of the ground giving way  beneath my feet, my friend encouraged me to do something I had never done before. It sounded almost heretical, at least to someone like me who loves the Bible and has read it many, many times. My friend asked me to consider setting aside the Bible for a period of time in order to focus very intentionally on my own personal relationship with Him.
I thought the idea was too risky. Unnecessary. It didn’t feel safe, and I didn’t want to do it.
But while I was in Israel earlier this year, walking down a road where Jesus likely walked, I read these words in my Bible, words spoken by Jesus Himself to the religious leaders of His day–leaders who had studied the Scriptures for years, inside and out. Jesus said:
“You have your heads in your Bibles constantly because you think you’ll find eternal life there. But you miss the forest for the trees. These Scriptures are all about Me! And here I am, standing right before you, and you aren’t willing to receive from Me the life you say you want” (John 5:39-40, MSG).
I was struck to the heart and challenged anew. What would it look like if I were to fast for a period of time from relying on other people’s relationships with God as a substitute for my own, even if those others included people like David and Moses and Paul. What would–and does–my unique relationship with God look like?
I decided to give it a try for a time, praying and asking God to build my relationship with Him even stronger than before. And just last week, I finally broke through!
During our worship service at church, our pastor was talking about prayer. Everything he said was speaking directly to my heart. It was if God Himself were prefacing every sentence with my name.: “Eric, …” “Eric, …” “Eric, …”  I jotted down notes as fast as I could, knowing that God was using these words to speak to me directly, encouraging me to take the next step towards going deeper with Him.
When the message was done, we sang a song to God in response to all we had just heard. As I sang, I felt like I could practically see the ground beneath my feet starting to give way! I could see a hole opening up right there in the concrete floor! And as the ground was giving way and the floor was falling out, I could see it clearly: that rushing river that I couldn’t see before!
When the song ended, the shaking stopped and the concrete floor was perfectly solid once more, hard as rock. But I had seen the river, and I very much wanted to jump through that hole and into the river, letting it take me further and deeper than I had ever gone before.
The next few days, I was captivated by that image of the river beneath me. I felt like I could almost slip down through the ground at any moment and into the water below. But then I’d stop myself. I wondered, Do I really want to do this? I was tethered, in a good way I felt, to all of these other people’s relationships with God–and I wanted to stay tethered to them. What would happen if I were to really unhook and explore what my relationship with God was like on my own?
On Wednesday, I found my answer!
I was listening to a speaker at a men’s breakfast at our church, when suddenly the speaker shouted: “STAY TETHERED TO JESUS!” I knew that instant exactly what God wanted me to do! All I had to do was to release my tether from relying on the experiences of others, and tether myself to Jesus Himself, which is the very thing I would love to do as well!  I love the Bible; it’s my favorite book in the world. But I don’t miss the forest for the trees. I don’t want to be holding onto the words about Jesus so tightly that I miss taking hold of Jesus Himself!
Yes, Lord! I thought. That’s what I want!
I took the other end of my tether, and I hooked firmly to Jesus. I looked into the hole below me that had now opened up again, and knew I could make the jump whenever I was ready. And I was ready, knowing that Jesus was holding tightly to the other end of my rope.
I jumped!
What I hadn’t expected was that at the very same moment that I jumped, Jesus jumped, too! AHHHHH!!! Now I was in a total freeful, with no ground beneath me and no rope above me. I looked over at Jesus, shocked that He had just jumped over the edge at the same time that I did! He just looked at me and smiled as we continued to hurtle down toward the river below.
That wasn’t what I had expected. It was better! I was doing this with Jesus. Praise God!
Over the past few days, I’ve been heading down that river with Jesus, going further and deeper than I’ve ever gone before. But that’s not the end of the story.
Yesterday morning, I woke up thinking about this new journey. And while I love the idea of having Jesus with me, I kept saying over and over, “I don’t want to go alone.” (He’s a good friend; He knew what I meant.)
Then I looked up above us, and in the same way I had seen Jesus and me jumping over the edge of the hole and into the river, I now saw one or two dozen more people at the edge, parachuting over it! They were coming along with us!
They were coming with us, but I felt like God was saying that they weren’t ready yet to get in the river with us. They wanted to watch as we went along. But one by one, God was saying, when they saw the joy that it brought us to be in the river, they would join us in the river, too. And not just one or two dozen, but hundreds and thousands–and eventually hundreds of thousands!
I wouldn’t be alone! We’d all be rushing down the river together, going further and deeper than we’d ever gone before.
How about you? Want to come along? I’d love to have you join me!
Just make sure to “STAY TETHERED TO JESUS!” (And don’t be surprised if He jumps when you do!)
I’m convinced this isn’t the end of this story. The best is yet to come!

The best theology is rather a divine life than a divine knowledge.
Jeremy Taylor

I sought the LORD, and He heard me, And delivered me from all my fears.
Psalm 34:4
The New King James Version

No one can break any of the Ten Commandments.  He can only break himself against them.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

One great piece of mischief has been done by the modern restriction of the word temperance to the question of drink.  It helps people to forget that you can be just as intemperate about lots of other things.  A man who makes his golf or his motorcycle the center of his life, or a woman who devotes all her thoughts to clothes or bridge or her dog, is being just as “intemperate” as someone who gets drunk every evening.  Of course, it does not show on the outside so easily; bridge mania or golf mania do not make you fall down in the middle of the road.  But God is not deceived by externals.
C. S. Lewis

“Now fear the LORD and serve him with all faithfulness.  Throw away the gods your forefathers worshiped beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the LORD.  But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living.  But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.”
Joshua 24:14-15
The New International Version

To love another person is to help them love God.
Soren Kierkegaard

A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish son grief to his mother.
Proverbs 10:1
The New International Version

Use your uniqueness to make a big deal out of God every day of your life!
Max Lucado

The thing of which we have to beware is not so much damage to our belief in God as damage to our Christian temper.  “Therefore take heed to thy spirit, that ye deal not treacherously.”  The temper of mind is tremendous in its effects, it is the enemy that penetrates right into the soul and distracts the mind from God, and until we get back to the quiet mood before God, our faith in Him is nil, and our confidence in the flesh and in human ingenuity is the thing that rules.
Oswald Chambers

Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.
Matthew 26:41
The King James Version

Our sense of joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment in life increases, no matter what the circumstances, if we are in the center of God’s will.
Billy Graham

Blessed is the one who reads the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.
Revelation 1:3
The New International Version

A helping word to one in trouble is often like a switch on a railroad track, an inch between wreck and smooth-rolling prosperity.
Henry W. Beecher

RECALIBRATING MY GOALS
by Eric Elder
The Ranch
 
Question: If you’re stranded on a desert island, what 3 things would you most want to have? Answer: Michael Phelps, a saddle, and a gold medal on a stick!
I’ve been watching the Olympics the past two weeks, and I’m inspired. I’m inspired to see what people can do when they put their minds to it, with Michael Phelps being example #1. He had a dream, he went for it, and he worked hard to attain it.
I’ve also been reviewing my own goals for this year–goals which I set back in January–and I’m inspired to pick up the pace to see what I can still accomplish by the end of the year. Unfortunately, I’ve fallen behind on some of my goals. I’ve stopped working actively on others.  And I’ve found that the targets that I was aiming for at first on one or two of my goals have moved.
But with the fall fast approaching, and the end of the year coming into view, I’m inspired to recalibrate my goals and keep pressing forward.
If you read my goal-setting message at the beginning of the year, you might remember that one of my goals was to write a complete script and score (dialogue and music) for a new musical based on a book my wife and I wrote a few years back about the real-life Saint Nicholas who lived back in the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D.
I’m pleased to tell you I’ve finished writing 1/3 of the script and 1/3 of the score! But I still have 2/3’s to go–and only 1/3 of the year left to get there! So this week I had a decision to make. I could either get discouraged that I’ve fallen behind and give up on the project altogether, or I could pick up the pace, press on, and keep moving forward toward my goal. As I looked at that goal again this week, remembering why I set it, how I thought I could accomplish it, and the progress I’ve made so far, I’m ready to dive back into writing again.

I had another goal this year to lose some weight. By the middle of the year I had lost 1/2 of the weight I had hoped to lose for the year, and I was right on target. But over the past 6 weeks, I’ve taken a break from tracking and losing weight, only to find I’ve gained some of it back. So this week I had another decision to make. I could either get discouraged that I’ve not only stopped making progress toward that goal, but have actually started going backward, or I could pick up the pace, press on, and keep moving forward toward my goal. And as I looked at that goal again this week, remembering why I set it, how I thought I could accomplish it, and the progress I’ve made so far, I’m ready to dive back into tracking and losing more weight, too.
It wasn’t easy to decide to jump back into these goals, but I had a small victory this week that gave me some encouragement.
I was mowing a large patch of grass behind our house with a push mower–not an electric push mower, but a “reel”-type hand push mower like my grandpa used to use. The grass had gotten taller, so pushing through the grass wasn’t easy. I kept having to stop to clear out grass and sticks that kept the reel from spinning (and honestly I was thankful for the break each time so I could stop and catch my breath and wipe the sweat from my face). I didn’t think I could finish the whole patch, and I was tempted several times to give up and go inside.
But as I was pushing the mower, I started thinking about all of my goals for the year–why I had set them, what I hoped to accomplish by doing them, and what might happen if I actually achieved them–and I was inspired to keep going with them all… and with mowing, too! Even though I was ready to give up after 20 minutes, then 30 minutes, then 40 minutes, I kept pushing on until, at 45 minutes, I was done! (And yes, this is the same patch of grass where I was pulling weeds a few weeks back and had to give myself continual pep talks to finish that project, too!)
Fresh off this victory, I went back inside, took a shower, and pulled out all of my goals again for the year. Yes, I had fallen behind on some of them. Yes, I had gone backwards on others. And yes, I was going to have to take aim in a different direction to hit the rest. But I knew–like every Olympian who has competed in Brazil these past two weeks–that if I kept on track and kept putting in the hard work it takes to achieve my goals, then I would certainly achieve more than I could ever achieve otherwise.
And somewhere along the way, I just might win a gold.