Tag Archives: Lies

Duct Tape

“Do not snatch the word of truth from my mouth.” Psalm 119:43-NIV

Duct Tape

The stickiest substance known to mankind, well, as far as sealing products goes. The man-made
miracle of duct tape…it has hundreds of uses, if not more. From sealing boxes
to fixing leaks in a raft, duct tape is an extremely versatile substance.

 And who hasn’t heard the phrase, “I wish I had some duct tape to shut them up!”

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you wanted to say something, perhaps even feeling
compelled to say something, just speak up, but that proverbial duct tape has silenced you? The words press against
your lips, screaming against your tongue to be released, and yet your mouth, or
even your brain, refuses to cooperate. You leave the scene feeling ashamed,
regretful, emotional…the “what ifs” begin. What
if I had said something….what if I had done this….maybe it would have turned
out differently. A real nightmare you have.

Once again you’ve become victim to the duct tape of man, also known as fear. Fear of man can be an
effective silencer of the boldest believer. We fear rejection, acceptance, or the
repercussions of not being a part of a group anymore.  We’re insecure.

If you get nothing else out of this, I pray you get this simple truth. Man cannot take what God
has already given you. God has accepted you, secured you and given his truth to
you. No amount of fear should keep you from sharing that with a world of people
who are in desperate need of it. Does this mean we jump on our box with our
picket signs painted in the bright red letters of JOHN 3:16 at every street
corner? No, unless God has spoken to you to do so. I imagine there are many
other ways we can speak up and share the life and love of Jesus without bashing
people over the head with a “turn or burn” approach.

How many times do we pass by the homeless man as we’re walking and offer a kind hello? Or offer a
drink to the man working in our house, or let someone go ahead of us in the
grocery store? How many times do we get upset when the waitress gets our order
wrong, or the line at the bank is moving too slowly and we’re late for work? I’m
talking about living the truth of Jesus. By living the truth of Jesus we have
the means to back up the words we
speak about him.

If we’re not going to speak the truth that we have been given the privilege and honor of holding dear
in our hearts, we may as well get that roll of duct tape and wrap it around our
Bibles.

Prayer

Jesus, today I confess that I
have missed many opportunities to share your truth with those around me,
whether through your Gospel message or by an act of kindness towards a stranger.
I ask that your Spirit grant me with the discernment necessary to know when to
speak truth and when to keep my mouth shut, and I ask that I never need to feel
the regret of another missed opportunity.  

Tolerate

“You established the earth and it endures.
Your laws endure to this day, for all things serve you.” Psalm 119:90b-91-NIV

Tolerate

Traffic lights; long
lines; rude people; boring sermons; elevator music; gas prices; work.

Things we tolerate. Why do we tolerate these
things? I suppose it’s because we have to, right? If we want to get where we’re
going we must wait at those traffic lights; if we want to eat we must wait in
those long, slow lines at the grocery store. (Don’t you just love how they only
have one cashier to work when they
have fifteen registers?! Sigh…I digress). We have bills to pay so we tolerate
working all of our lives, but praise Jesus if you are blessed to have a job you
actually love! And what of those boring sermons? Well, your poor pastor can’t
bring down the fire every Sunday,
give him a break! It’s called reality.

The Bible mentions
tolerate a little differently. It calls it “enduring”. Psalm 119:90 says the
earth endures. Wait a minute, the earth is tolerating.
What is the earth tolerating exactly?

Come with me to an
open field on a grassy hilltop. The breeze is cool, the sun is shining. We see
tall flowers blowing against the bright blue sky line. Glorious. Gradually a
thud begins, then louder it comes until “clomp clomp clomp,” that gorgeous
yellow bloom blowing in the breeze has been snuffed out, cut short by the stomp
of muddy boots breaking through our scene in a hurry to get to the lake beyond
the hill.

Bummer.

Humans, we must be a
real treat to tolerate at times.

We are told there
will be a new heaven and a new earth one day (Revelation 21). Life as God
intended, in total perfection. Until then the earth endures (us, perhaps) and
it serves God under the laws he has given: laws of gravity and the laws of
motion. The seasons we are given come and go due to the motion of space, the
rotation of the moon and sun and the earth. It all works in harmony; all of
creation follows perfectly ordered laws laid out by the Creator. The smallest
of flowers bends its will to the sovereign God of the universe while man,
created in the image of God himself, often shakes his fist at the Creator and
questions and doubts at the very minimum.  It’s no wonder God doesn’t merely tolerate us!
But NO! That would go against his very nature of holiness! Instead God loves us
so much he not only gave us the biggest sacrifice of all in His son Jesus, but
he also threw the icing on the cake with giving us all of nature to marvel at
and enjoy!

If the earth and
nature itself endures and serves God willfully, we would do well to look on and
learn from the example given. Have you ever heard a flower complain as its
petals are picked off by a person humming “He loves me, he loves me not?” Have
you ever heard a rain drop whimper as it splatters across the windshield of a
racing car? Have you ever heard a blade of grass rage over getting trampled
under the foot of a workman’s boot?

Are we serving God
with our whole hearts or merely
tolerating his words as ideas in our lives?

He sees our true
heart.

Prayer

I praise you, Jesus. As my
Creator I am thankful for your generosity. You have given all of nature for my
pleasure and I often take it for granted. The next time I see your creations may
I be motivated to serve you with all my heart.

“…that I might not sin against You…”

 “I have hidden your word in my heart, that I might not sin against You.” Psalm 119:11 (NLT)

When I was a bank teller I had to undergo some training before I was allowed to be on my own assisting customers. One of the things I had to study was money; what it looked like, its characteristics, how it felt, who was on each denomination, what the security features were…etc. It was important as tellers we understood what the real deal was before we were out there handling thousands of dollars every day, because it was inevitable that we would come across counterfeits. I did discover counterfeit bills in my years as a teller, and I would not have known what to look for unless I had understood what a genuine dollar was like, beyond just an initial glance.

Each word in the Bible acts like a cell does in the human body; it has to work in harmony with all the others so that the whole sum of the product functions appropriately. When we accurately dissect the word of truth in context, rather than picking and choosing what we want to believe, we are made aware of truth as it all flows together harmoniously.  The more truth we know, the more likely we are to recognize a counterfeit when we see it. “So long as Eve kept by faith the word of the Lord, she resisted Satan; but from the time she doubted of that, which God made most certain by his word, at once she was snared.” (William Cowper)