PONDER THESE
Over many years God has given me some significant meditations that I have crafted into written quotes. I offer them today for you to ponder, make you think, and stir and edify your spirit.
Pastor Mark Darling
“I would no more face life apart from trusting God than I would venture out into -60 below zero weather apart from my clothes, my winter coat, warm gloves, and winter boots. To do so would be sheer madness and stupidity!”
“Convictions are the guardians of the soul. Without them, the soul will wander, stagger, and eventually fall.”
“Hunger for the word of God is different than a hunger for food. Although the Bible draws a parallel between the two, there is a considerable difference. No one has to tell you to eat, as humans it is a basic instinct. We cannot ignore our natural craving for food, it is deeply instinctive. Hunger for the word of God is not! Though it is far more valuable to real life than bread, hungering for it and feeding on it does not come naturally. It must be a choice of our will, repeated over and over again. We must train ourselves to eat it. Surprisingly though, if for a while we neglect it, often rather than feeling a deep hunger for it as we would for physical food, our spiritual appetite begins to dwindle and fade. Soon we don’t even miss it. Slowly but surely our life begins to reveal the barrenness of our soul by having let the habit slide and abate. It becomes more and more difficult to get back into the habit because the passing of time and neglect have left us deluded into thinking it wasn’t that important anyway. The reality is the more you feed on the Word of God, the hungrier you become for it, and the less you feed on it, the less you feel a need for it.”
“God won’t shield us from all pain and suffering in the Christian life, just as He didn’t for Christ. Pain, sorrow, and suffering are the nature of the work of God on earth. However, God promises to give us all the grace and strength and divine help we need to face and endure this life, just as He did for Christ.”
“Somehow we have come to believe that the longer man has lived on the planet, the more experienced and advanced we have become as a society, that we have somehow outsmarted God. By now God and his Word have become obsolete! Actually, the reverse is true. The longer man has lived on the planet, the more our behavior has validated our desperate need for God and His Word. As all man’s history proves to us that sin, pride, and moral decay do indeed destroy people and nations. God’s ways are better than ours. God’s foolishness is greater than man’s wisdom!”
“We measure love not by the quantity of our feelings but by the quantity of our caring actions, kindness, devotion, and service. These are the measure of the depth of our love.”
“Remember: Death is not necessarily the end of suffering, but simply the continuation of the life choice we have made to either embrace Jesus Christ now and live with Him in eternity where there is no more suffering, or reject Him now and live without Him in an eternity where suffering and anguish never, ever ends. Death is the step into the irreversible reality of our choice to embrace or reject God.”
“We live in a high-tech world where everything seems to move at the speed of light. So much has changed in our world in the last 50 years. The way we cook, the microwave, the smartphone, taking and sending photos, instantly written communication through email or text messages, overnight delivery, instantly downloaded movies streaming into your home, and paying our bills online. It is imperative that we understand that though we live in a high tech world, you still cannot have a high tech relationship with God. It has remained the same as it was in David’s time, thousands of years ago when he wrote the Psalms. It takes you getting time alone with God away from the distractions of this high tech, gadget culture, seeking and waiting on Him. It takes time, desperation, intentionally seeking God through prayer, reading the scriptures, meditating on the word of God and what the Bible reveals to us about God and His character, and meeting with God in private worship and thanksgiving. In a high-tech world, it still takes a low tech, old fashioned approach to get to know God. You must seek Him with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength!”
This would be well worth your time to watch with your family. It is from the “Twilight Zone” and illustrates our need for God and His truth, something the state can never replace. It teaches an extremely timely and powerful lesson. It is called “The Obsolete Man.” Extremely moving.
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