How to Attract Divine Presence

Now the Lord was with Jehoshaphat, because he…did not seek the Baals, but sought the God of his father, and walked in His commandments and not according to the acts of Israel. Therefore the Lord established the kingdom in his hand; – 2 Chronicles 17:3-5

The passage above presents us with a principle that attracts the company of God in the journey of life. In summary, the Scripture says Jehoshaphat was not given to idolatry; but he sought God and walked in His commandments. Those were enough reasons for him to have God as company.

Life can be tough even for people who are committed to God, not to talk of those who do not have an ongoing relationship with Him. The latter have no divine cover and are susceptible to all forms of troubles and afflictions.

Jehoshaphat made himself attractive to God because he shunned idolatry by not seeking another god apart from the Almighty God. In this context, “sought” portrays a sense of conscious, deliberate and sustained efforts. That means, Jehoshaphat consciously, deliberately and regularly sought to understand God; how He reasoned, what He wanted, how He wanted it and when, then he disciplined himself to abide by the dictates of his findings.

He also chose not to do the popular things of his time. The Scripture says he did not walk “according to the acts of Israel.” He did not allow himself to be influenced in the opposite direction of God; instead, he shunned the distractions and followed God’s counsel all the way. Those were enough considerations for God to stay with him and establish his kingdom. And God doesn’t stay anywhere without impacts. Perhaps, we can learn from his example.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

The Folded Napkin; A Truckers Story

Author Unknown

But do not forget to do good and to share, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased. – Hebrews 13:16

If this doesn’t light your fire … your wood is wet!

I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His placement counselor assured me that he would be a good, reliable busboy.

But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn’t sure I wanted one. I wasn’t sure how my customers would react to Stevie.

He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome. I wasn’t worried about most of my trucker customers because truckers don’t generally care who buses tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are homemade.

The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded “truck stop germ,” the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with. I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie, so I closely watched him for the first few weeks.

I shouldn’t have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month, my truck regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot.

After that, I really didn’t care what the rest of the customers thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old kid in blue jeans and Nikes, eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his duties. Every salt and peppershaker was exactly in its place, not a breadcrumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag. If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he met.

Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often, admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live together and Stevie being sent to a group home.

That’s why the restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first morning in three years that Stevie missed work. He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age so this wasn’t unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

To continue…

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

The Ant Fable

Every day, a small ant arrives at work very early and starts work immediately. She produces a lot and she was happy.

The Chief, a lion, was surprised to see that the ant was working without supervision. He thought if the ant can produce so much without supervision, wouldn’t she produce even more if she had a supervisor.

So he recruited a cockroach who had extensive experience as supervisor and who was famous for writing excellent reports. The cockroach’s first decision was to set up a clocking in attendance system. He also needed a secretary to help him write and type his reports and he recruited a spider, who managed the archives and monitored all phone calls.

The lion was delighted with the cockroach’s reports and asked him to produce graphs to describe production rates and to analyse trends, so that he could use them for presentations at Board‘s meetings.

So the cockroach had to buy a new computer and a laser printer and recruited a fly to manage the IT department.

The ant, who had once been so productive and relaxed, hated this new plethora of paperwork and meetings which used up most of her time!

The lion came to the conclusion that it was high time to nominate a person in charge of the department where the ant worked. The position was given to the cicada, whose first decision was to buy a carpet and an ergonomic chair for his office.

The new person in charge, the cicada, also needed a computer and a personal assistant, whom he brought from his previous department, to help him prepare a Work and Budget Control Strategic Optimisation Plan. The Department where the ant works is now a sad place, where nobody laughs anymore and everybody has become upset.

It was at that time that the cicada convinced the boss, the lion, of the absolute necessity to start a climatic study of the environment. Having reviewed the charges for running the ant’s department, the lion found out that the production was far less than before.

So he recruited the owl, a prestigious and renowned consultant to carry out an audit and suggest solutions. The owl spent three months in the department and came up with an enormous report, in several volumes, that concluded: “The department is overstaffed.”

Guess who the lion fires first? The ant, of course, because she “showed lack of motivation and had a negative attitude”.

Moral: The beauty of life and work is in keeping it simple.

Meditation: Stand fast therefore in the liberty by which Christ has made us free, and do not be entangled again with a yoke of bondage. – Galatians 5:1

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

A Thousand Marbles

Author Unknown

Another man dies in the bitterness of his soul, Never having eaten with pleasure. – Job 21:25

The older I get, the more I enjoy Saturday mornings. Perhaps it’s the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe it’s the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable. A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the kitchen with a steaming cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other. What began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons that life seems to hand you from time to time.

Let me tell you about it. I turned the volume up on my radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning talk show. I heard an older sounding chap with a golden voice. You know the kind, he sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business himself. He was talking about “a thousand marbles” to someone named “Tom”. I was intrigued and sat down to listen to what he had to say.

“Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you’re busy with your job. I’m sure they pay you well but it’s a shame you have to be away from home and your family so much. Hard to believe a young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a week to make ends meet. Too bad you missed your daughter’s dance recital.” He continued, “Let me tell you something Tom, something that has helped me keep a good perspective on my own priorities.” And that’s when he began to explain his theory of a “thousand marbles.”

“You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic. The average person lives about seventy-five years. Know, some live more and some live less, but on average, folks live about seventy-five years.”

“Now then, I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3,900 which is the number of Saturdays that the average person has in their entire lifetime. Now stick with me Tom, I’m getting to the important part.”

“It took me until I was 55 years old to think about all this in any detail”, he went on, “and by that time I had lived through over 2800 Saturdays. I got to thinking that if I lived to be 75, I only had about a thousand of them left to enjoy.”

“So I went to a toy store and bought every single marble they had. I ended up having to visit three toy stores to round-up 1000 marbles. I took them home and put them inside of a large, clear plastic container right here in my workshop next to the radio. Every Saturday since then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.”

“I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused more on the really important things in life. There is nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out to help get your priorities straight.”

“Now let me tell you one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my lovely wife out for breakfast. This morning, I took the very last marble out of the container. I figure if I make it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra time. And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.”

“It was nice to talk to you Tom, I hope you spend more time with your loved ones, and I hope to meet you again someday. Have a good morning!”

You could have heard a pin drop when he finished. Even the show’s moderator didn’t have anything to say for a few moments. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about. I had planned to do some work that morning, then go to the gym. Instead, I went upstairs and woke my wife up with a kiss.

“C’mon honey, I’m taking you and the kids to breakfast.”

“What brought this on?” she asked with a smile.

“Oh, nothing special, it’s just been a long time since we spent a Saturday together with the kids. Hey, can we stop at a toy store while we’re out? I need to buy some marbles.”

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

The Story of the Lazy Bird

Author Unknown

Therefore strengthen the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees, and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be dislocated, but rather be healed. – Hebrews 12:12-13

Once there was a rich man who bought two beautiful birds as pets for his garden. The birds were some of the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his gardener to be trained.

Many days passed, then one day the gardener informed the rich man that though one of the birds was flying beautifully, soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived.

The rich man called in healers and magicians from all over the country to tend to the bird, but no one could make the bird fly. Then the rich man thought to himself, “Maybe I need someone more familiar with the countryside to understand the nature of this problem.” So he called out to his gardener, “Go and get a villager.”

In the morning, the rich man was thrilled to see the bird soaring high above the garden.

Then the rich man asked the villager, “How did you make the bird fly?”

With his head bowed, the villager said to the rich man, ”It was very easy, sir. I simply cut the branch where the bird was sitting.”

We are all made to fly and fulfil our incredible potential as human beings. But instead of doing that, we tend to sit on our branches, clinging to the things that are familiar to us. The possibilities are endless; but, for most of us, they remain undiscovered. We conform to the familiar, the comfortable, the mundane. So for the most part, our lives are mediocre instead of exciting, thrilling and fulfilling.

Let us destroy the branch of fear we cling to and free ourselves to the glory of flight.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

Cast out the Net

Author Unknown

And He said to them, “Cast the net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast, and now they were not able to draw it in because of the multitude of fish. – John 21:6

Very early in life (almost from birth) we are trained to be successful according to the world’s definition of success. We are driven by goals and accomplishments from the day we take our first steps and ride our first bike. As we grow older, we are pressured to accumulate knowledge and “things” in order to prove our success.

In our Christian walk, Jesus calls us to a new definition of success – one determined not by what we accomplish, but by our obedience. The disciples walked and talked with Jesus, but they still faced many challenges with faith and obedience. One morning after fishing all night without a catch, Jesus called from the shore. John 21:6 “He said, ‘Throw your net on the right side of the boat and you will find some {fish}.’ When they did, they were unable to haul the net in because of the large number of fish.”

The disciples were successful that morning. But we must understand that the large number of fish did not define their success. They would have been successful even if the nets remained empty. They were successful the moment they were obedient and threw out the net. One thousand years earlier, King Saul was told to “attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them,” (1 Samuel 15:3). But Saul allowed the Amalekite king and the best livestock to survive. He tried to cover His disobedience by saying the calves and lambs were for a sacrifice to God. “But Samuel replied: ‘Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as much as in obeying the voice of the Lord? To obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed is better than the fat of rams.'” (1 Samuel 15:22).

In any task we undertake for God, it’s easy to become discouraged by our apparent lack of success. We often feel inadequate – and those feelings increase when our goals seem to be elusive. But we must remember, the outcome of the task is secondary to our obedience. God doesn’t need our “fish” – He wants our devotion and trust. He desires that we love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. Let’s take our eyes off the accomplishment of the “catch” and what we can produce. Rather, let’s focus on walking each step according to His leading. Let’s concentrate all our effort on obeying His call to cast out the net.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!

Practice Humility

You will save the humble people; But Your eyes are on the haughty, that You may bring them down. – 2 Samuel 22:28

Many years ago, a rider came across some soldiers who were trying to move a heavy log without success. The corporal was standing by as the men struggled. The rider asked the corporal why he wasn’t helping. The corporal replied, “I am the corporal; I give orders.”

The rider dismounted, went up and stood by the soldiers and as they were lifting the log, he helped them. With his help, the log was moved. The rider quietly mounted his horse, went to the corporal and said, “The next time your men need help, send for the Commander-in-Chief.”

After he left, the corporal and his men found out that the rider was George Washington.

The message is clear. Success and humility go hand in hand. When others blow your horn, the sound goes further. Just think about it? Simplicity and humility are two hallmarks of greatness. Humility does not mean self-demeaning behaviour.

You will succeed in Jesus Name!