31 July 2007 Devotion for Today "Living With a Hole in Your Heart" Ephesians 4:31-32

31 July 2007 Devotion for Today “Living With a Hole in Your Heart”  I John 4:4

 

This past year I think I have had to change and fix four- maybe five flat tires in our driveway.   We have three vehicles, (I have two teenagers who are driving now, and another will be driving in a couple of years), so that makes for a lot of tires.  Few things are so irritating to me as to hurry out the door to go somewhere and there sits a car with a flat- of course all of the other cars are gone and here I sit- immobile and frustrated!  I pull out the jack and change out the tire with the “donut” tire in the trunk.  I’m all hot and sweaty, and then I take the car into town to the tire and muffler place I usually go.  The owner and I are on a first-name basis now- he has seen me so often.  He smiles as he sees me walk in the door.

 

“Another one?” he asks.  I nod my head. 

 

“I can’t understand why you keep picking up so many nails, unless you might have a house with aluminum siding on it?” he says in his North Carolina twang while sipping on a can of Cheerwine.

 

I told him I live in a home with aluminum siding but couldn’t understand what that aluminum siding had to do with the tires on my car.

 

“I see it all the time,” he said, “Round here, its always so windy.  The wind blows against your house and on the aluminum siding.  The siding wiggles back and forth so much that after a while, it starts pullin’ nails out that holds it in.  If you have a garage with the siding over it, the nails will fall right down in your driveway and then you run over them, see.  I would take a look at that if I were you.”

 

I was grateful for the advice and when I came home later that day, I scoured the driveway for nails, especially in the spot he recommended.  Sure enough!  I picked up two or three small roofing and siding nails and threw them away.   The nails have not stopped dropping, but I haven’t gotten a flat tire since then because I have been cognizant of looking for nails in that particular spot.

 

Having a hole in your tire may be inconvenient, but it can be fixed.  Having a hole in your heart, however, is much more difficult to fix.  The holes I am talking about are caused by things that stick into the relationships we have with others such as the barbs of distrust, criticism, or hurt.   These are susceptible to fall during the storms of crisis which blow against our souls.  The next thing we know, the relationship we have with someone we know is flat and not going anywhere, and we wonder how it came to be that way.  Living with a hole in your heart is also very painful, and does not simply go away like the flip of a light switch.  Only Christ can patch that hole, but it is painfully obvious that the relationship will never be the same again because it will have an embarrassing patch over it that everyone can see.   

            As difficult as it is to deal with, the one who has the responsibility to make things right, is you.  The tire is not going to get fixed simply because you know where the nails are coming from.  This is why the Apostle Paul said: Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, and evil speaking, be put away from you, with all malice: 32 And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” Ephesians 4:31-32.  

            Paul tells us that we own the responsibility of not allowing bitterness,  example, to become a problem with someone.  So if we find a flat, or even a small leak, it is up to us to repair it, patch things up, and to make it right.  The nails will always be dropping, but we don’t have to live with a hole in our hearts.  Christ will help us mend it- indeed He commands us to do it.  Then we can be kind and forgiving to one another as Christ as forgiven us.  But first we must take care of the hole that is in our hearts

            Have a blessed day.

 

 

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com

jcrussell@liberty.edu

 

Church website:   http://25621.lifewaylink.com
Devotion Archives: http://www.msnusers.com/DevotionforToday

 

30 July 2007 Devotion for Today "Emotional Margins" Psalm 42:1-2

30 July 2007  Devotion for Today  “Emotional Margins”  Psalm 42:1-2

 

            Borrowing the idea from Dr. Richard Swenson’s Margin book, to be healthy, we require margin in at least five different areas of our lives:  We need emotional margin. We need physical margin.  We need time margin, and we need financial margin.  Most of all, we need spiritual margin.  Last time we saw what eats away out of most of our margins and that is the fact that  we try to serve two masters.  We try to serve God and mammon. 

            You would think that our progress would have been kinder to our emotional lives but it hasn’t.  Our babies seldom die anymore, and famine is virtually unknown to us.  We have telephones when we get lonely, air conditioners when we get hot, Tylenol when we get a toothache, and television when we get bored.  You would think that as convenient as life is beginning to be, that we wouldn’t have the emotional stress that we have as we have noted since we have taken such a quantum leap of progress.             

            In our text, David cried out for the streams of water. 

As the deer pants for the water brooks,

         So pants my soul for You, O God.

            My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.

         When shall I come and appear before God?

Here was a man expressing the fact that he was emotionally empty, drained, and dry.   We are too, why?  You would think that our anxiety and depression, and suicide and nervous breakdowns, personality disorders, panic attack, obsessive disorders, bipolarism, eating disorders, drug abuse and alcohol abuse and all manner of phobias and psychoses that we see would decrease as life seems to get easier.  No, in fact, like weeds in a garden, they all drain us dry.  Did you know that between 22-28 percent of Americans suffer from a mental or emotional disorder in any given year?  You do the math and that is one fourth of our nation’s population.  That means that one fourth of our population is either going through an emotional meltdown, have been through one, or getting ready to go through one.  Some of you may be in the middle of one right now. 

            You may remember when, back in the 1960s, they started coming out with tranquilizers to soothe our frazzled nerves?  The double whammy of this situation is that while these drugs began controlling our symptoms, they did not cure the underlying problems.  Now our pain continues, compounded by tranquilizer and drug addiction.  Depression is pandemic in our country- it covers all socio-economic groups.  Depression is to the 21st century what Smallpox was to the 18th century, or AIDs to the 20th century.  It is not confined to any one educational level.  No one is immune from it.  Like the Asian flu virus, it strikes at any age, any race, any occupation, at any time.   Like an emotional undertow, it seeks to pull us all under.   Little wonder why the therapists’ offices are so full, and for every person suffering from a mental or emotional disorder, the lives of at least three other persons are affected by it.  If I told you any more, you’d all be tempted to put a gun to your head before this message is through.  Obviously this is not how God meant for us to live.

            Tomorrow we will consider this more, but for right now, consider that the hole in your heart is caused by an emptiness and dryness that only God can fill.  David returned to Him in order to be filled by Him again.  You can too. 

            Have a blessed day!

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com

jcrussell@liberty.edu

 

Church website:   http://25621.lifewaylink.com
Devotion Archives: http://www.msnusers.com/DevotionforToday

 

25 July 2007 Devotion for Today "Margin" John 10:10

25 July 2007  Devotion for Today  “Margin”  John 10:10

 

            You might want to look at the page of a book or the Scripture text to read along with this devotional today.  What are you reading?  The fact that you are able to read it at all is because these words that you see are defined not by the printed matter that you see in front of you, but by the white space to the top, bottom, left and right sides that you normally do not notice.  This white space, serving as a border and demarcating the printed matter is gives order and meaning to everything to the inside of the page.  This white space is called the margin.  This margin is not incidental- for in fact if we didn’t have margin on the page, the book you are looking, the page of your magazine or even  your Bible, would be very difficult to read.  In fact, the words on the page, without the margin, would be almost incomprehensible.  For instance, if you are reading a book with no margin on the left side where the book is bound, you would not be able to see the words squeezed in on that side.  It would be so difficult to read that you would just set down that book with no margin and find something else to read.

 

            What was the point of that whole illustration?  To demonstrate to you that you take margin out of a book or a page and you may not be able to read it, or make much sense- but unfortunately that is what we have done to life.  We have literally snatched, chopped, sliced, and otherwise pulled out the margin .  But you take the margin out of life, and what you have done is to overload your life so much that its only a matter of time before emotional, financial, spiritual, moral, and physical breakdown is going to occur.  Being “marginless” as defined by Dr. Richard Swenson  “is when you end up being 30 minutes late to the doctors office because you were 20 minutes late getting out of the bank because you were 10 minutes late dropping the kids off at school because the car ran out of gas two blocks from the gas station- and you forgot your wallet!  Margin, on the other hand, is having breath left at the top of the staircase, money left at the end of the month, and sanity left at the end of your kids’ adolescence.”

 

            People seem to be frazzled beyond the breaking point these days.  We hear more and more of people “flipping out” in tragedies like Columbine and Virginia Tech.  About a third of Americans are on some kind of medication for their nerves or for their stomachs.   One wonders, did God ever mean for life to be this hard?   Jesus came to give us eternal life- which is the ultimate expression of what margin is all about.  You never see Jesus stressed-out . He was extremely busy, and yet not once did He miss that time to be with His heavenly Father.  But when you observe the at the life of Jesus, you see someone who was never in a hurry, yet He only had three years to accomplish what God sent Him on Earth to do.  He said in John 10:10   “I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly- He was not only talking about eternity.  He was also talking about time.  Time right here on earth, and how to experience that abundant life of margin that God desires us to have.  

 

            Perhaps you might consider what margin(s) do you need to reset in your life today?  We’ll be looking more at this subject this week.  But after reading this devotional, why not indulge in a nap and restore some energy to face the rest of the day.  Stop and pray, and thank God for the margin of time you have with Him.   Turn around from the computer and greet that child or loved one, or even that workmate and tell them how much you appreciate them. 

 

Then you may be on the way to having a blessed day!

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com

jcrussell@liberty.edu

 

Church website:   http://25621.lifewaylink.com
Devotion Archives: http://www.msnusers.com/DevotionforToday

 

24 July 2007 Devotion for Today "Jerry Falwell's Grave" Joel 2:28-29

24 July 2007  Devotion for Today  “Jerry Falwell’s Grave”   Joel 2:28-29

 

            I know I have been rather scarce lately- its because I have been away: some of it on vacation and the most part of it at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.  I am taking some course work for my doctor of ministry studies there.  When I arrived on campus early Sunday evening, I walked about the campus and behind the chancellor’s house.  I found myself standing beside a modest wrought-iron garden fence bordering a small plot  of newly sewn grass.  A small bouquet of hydrangeas were placed over a small grave marker which simply read:  Dr. Jerry Falwell  1933-2007.  I remember becoming  overwhelmed with emotion as I contemplated the memories of the one buried there.  I know he is up in heaven with Jesus enjoying the rewards of a life of a servant who has done well for the glory of the Kingdom.  Some would say he was not the greatest preacher, but no one could say anything against his commitment to the truth of what he preached.   He was a much greater prophet and leader.  It was certain that not everyone agreed with him or what he stood for- indeed some in our nation are probably glad that he is gone.  Even so they ought to be glad he was here for the simple reason that the Gospel that he preached was enough so far to hold back the judgment of God upon them and upon this nation.  Falwell was a man possessed of extraordinary vision for Christ and was extremely sensitive in his stewardship and use of resources.  I thought it strange how he began a little church in a soda pop factory.  Now his 20,000 member church and much of Liberty University is housed in a sprawling former cell phone factory!  In these places God used Jerry Falwell to mass-produce, missionaries, preachers, teachers, lawyers and musicians, engineers and artists, godly people with godly lives committed to the vision of building the Kingdom of God.

            All of this is going to continue in the legacy that he left us thanks to Falwell’s wisdom to see beyond his earthly years to place the leadership of the institutions he founded into the hands of those who will be able to accomplish what he could not do. 

            This devotional is not so much a tribute to Jerry Falwell as much as it is a challenge to ourselves.  I spoke of tears that I shed a moment ago.   I did not only shed tears of grief, but tears of despair wondering what the spiritual climate of our nation and our world is going to look like after the Jerry Falwells, Billy Grahams, and other great spiritual leaders I grew up under are gone.  I don’t see too many bright stars on the horizon, and frankly it frightens me as our world becomes darker and darker.  Still, I must pray for and trust in the promise God’s Word which says:

“And it shall come to pass afterward

That  I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh;

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

Your old men shall dream dreams,

Your young men shall see visions.

And also on My  menservants and on My maidservants

I will pour out My Spirit in those days.”  Joel 2:28-29

 

Have a blessed day!

 

 

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com

jcrussell@liberty.edu

 

Church website:   http://25621.lifewaylink.com
Devotion Archives: http://www.msnusers.com/DevotionforToday

 

23 July 2007 Devotion for Today "The Merciful" Matthew 5:7

23 July 2007 Devotion for Today "The Merciful"  Matthew 5:7

The story is told about a little boy whose mother sent him on an errand

to buy a loaf of bread.  He was gone for about an hour, and the mother

began to grow worried.  The boy finally returned home with the loaf of

bread, and the mother asked, "What took you so long, I was worried 

about you."  The little boy said, "I'm sorry, Mom, but when I was on

my way home I met another boy whose bicycle was broken, so I stopped." 

The mother said, "That sure was nice, but I didn't know you knew so 

much about fixing bikes."  

The boy replied, "Oh, I don't know anything about fixing bikes, but the

boy was crying, so I sat there and cried with him!"

This touching story reminds us of what Jesus said in Matthew 5:7: 

"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy."  What is mercy?

Mercy is defined as a kindness or good will toward the hurting and needy, 

joined with a desire to help them.  We may find that we might not be

able to do much for someone who is in need, but that does not matter.

Dr. Charles Swindoll once said: "It does not mean only to sympathize 

with a person in the popular sense of the term; it does not mean simply

to feel sorry for someone in trouble. It means the ability to get right 

inside the other person’s skin. Clearly this is much more than an 

emotional wave of pity; this demands a deliberate effort of the mind and

of the will. It denotes a sympathy which is not given, as it were, from

the outside, but which comes from a deliberate identification with the 

other person, until we see things as he sees them, and feel things as 

he feels them.

To feel what others feel is not so difficult when we take the time. Is

there someone who needs mercy today.  You may not be able to feel 

exactly what they are feeling, and even that is not necessary.  But

what they need is someone to sit by them without saying a word so they

will not have to withstand the crisis alone.  That is mercy.  

Is there someone around you who needs mercy today?  It should not take

you long to find them, as that person might even be you.  Have a blessed

day!

 

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com

jcrussell@liberty.edu

 

Church website:   http://25621.lifewaylink.com
Devotion Archives: http://www.msnusers.com/DevotionforToday

 

Devotion for Today "Thief in the Night" I Thess. 5:1-4

Devotion for Today  "Thief in the Night"  I Thess. 5:1-4

One of our church members was out of town enjoying a nice vacation 

over the spring holidays.  When they returned, however, they found that

their home had been burglarized.  These people are very cautious and

never negligent about their personal security, yet they discovered 

that the back doorway had been pried open.  While nothing expensive 

was taken, some very precious family keepsakes were stolen that could

not be replaced. On commenting about the break-in one of the victims 

said, "If they were intent on stealing, I wished they had stolen 

the color television set- at least we could haved replace that."   

Burglary has happened to many of us, and it is not a nice thing to 

happen to anyone.  Apart from the grief and loss over some material

belongings you also feel a sense of violation that someone invaded your

private space and took something from you, leaving you very angry and

frustrated because in many cases the perpetrator is either never 

discovered or not brought to justice.  You feel grief in that a part

of your trust in your fellow man has also died.  The sense of bewilder-

ment in that someone came along, suddenly- while you were not looking-

and who can be looking every single second of the day?

As we examine our devotional passage in I Thessalonians 5:1-4, we 

discover that Jesus is going to return.  What will be the manner of

that return?  "But concerning the times and the seasons, brethren, you

have no need that I should write to you.  For you yourselves know

perfectly that the day of the Lord so comes as a thief in the night.

For when they say, 'Peace and safety!' then sudden destruction comes

upon them, as labor pains upon a pregnant woman.  And they shall not

escape.  But you, brethren, are not in darkness, so that this Day

should overtake you as a thief."

The Apostle Paul tells us that as believers in Jesus Christ we need

to constantly remind ourselves, and others, that there is no exact 

time when Christ will return, only that when He does return, it will

be unexpected.  Its not as though He has never warned us or told us,

but that most people will be living oblivious to this advent as they

were when He came to us the first time.  Even if the exact hour and

day were given, many would not interpret the urgency of the season 

until it is too late.  So we are told to live as though in the very

next moment Jesus may return.  But we are not trying to prevent His

coming.  Indeed we will live so that we will be the first to welcome

Him when He does return.  Have a blessed day!

 

Rev. Jeffery C. Russell
Salem Baptist Church
Elizabeth City, NC
jefferyrussell@embarqmail.com

jcrussell@liberty.edu

 

Church website:   http://25621.lifewaylink.com
Devotion Archives: http://www.msnusers.com/DevotionforToday