From my kitchen table...and beyond...: Are you ready for the game...

And I pull this off the shelf as I sit here listening to the rain come pouring down...and I breathe it in as we have so needed the rain...beautiful music to my ears...a beautiful site to behold. I give thanks that God has blessed us and I decide to finish this up...

So I was away from my kitchen table...made it up to Ag Day in Fort Collins where yes CSU did win against UNC. Yay Rams...I will have another blog perhaps of the weekend...but for now...another seems to prod...

Ag Day 2011...Izzy Sheridan...CSU fan...

So this morning I read the devotionals from Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. And I read the following in My Utmost for His Highest...from September 10th...(please note these were I think originally written in 1935 by Oswald Chambers...so I do not know what "crisis" he was speaking of....okay I get ahead of myself...

Missionary Munitions
"When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee."
John 1:48

We imagine we would be all right if a big crisis arose; but the big crisis will only reveal the stuff we are made of, it will not put anything into us. "If God gives the call, of course I will rise to the occasion." You will not unless you have risen to the occasion in the workshop, unless you have been the real thing before God there. If you are not doing the thing that lies nearest, because God has engineered it; when the crisis comes instead of being revealed as fit, you will be revealed as unfit. Crises always reveal character.

The private relationship of worshipping God is the great essential of fitness. The time comes when there is no more "fig-tree" life possible, when it is out into the open, out into the glare and into the work, and you will find yourself of no value there if you have not been worshipping as occasion serves you in your home. Worship aright in your private relationships, then when God sets you free you will be ready, because in the unseen life which no one saw but God you have become perfectly fit, and when the strain comes you can be relied upon by God.

"I can't be expected to live the sanctified life in the circumstances I am in; I have no time for praying just now, no time for Bible reading, my opportunity hasn't come yet; when it does, of course I shall be all right." No, you will not. If you have not been worshipping as occasion serves, when you get into work you will not only be useless yourself, but a tremendous hindrance to those who are associated with you.

And the past weekend so brings home CRISIS...on Friday it was six months since we lost Jay.   Something that plays on our thoughts and minds...but it was Firecracker Flex Friday and so a good day as well.   But I think of going through this process this CRISIS and I am thankful that I had started my time at my kitchen table...time of reflection....of study...of prayer.    Then when Mary and I began the God Calling...it was as though it was being accelerated in my time...and I am no way saying that I was prepared for what occurred...but I do say that the Lord had helped me be in a better place than I would have been a year ago...and I think of preparing ourselves and sitting under our fig tree...my fig tree being my kitchen table...

So my brother calls after I have read these and I am talking of my fig tree I guess...I really do not know how it came about but we had not talked about that much and he says how he had heard this guy talking about it being easier in the locker room or practicing...than when you are out in the game!    I laughed and said okay okay I am hearing it...because he had no more said that and he had to go.   Do you think God made him call me just to tell me that....could be...

But then Sunday was the tenth anniversary of September 11th.   And I realize that one can say that date and everyone knows what it is...what they were doing...but do we all reflect and remember that time.   I was flicking through channels...(something I do...I suppose my bike riding on the radio...used to make the shepherd crazy when I would change the radio stations all the time...and now he does it...go figure)...anyway I heard this tribute and when I try to find it, I realize that there were more broadcasts on this subject...however the one I heard was September 12th... Link to hear Focus on the Family broadcast...   It has some parts that really make you reflect on this CRISIS...of those who were hero's...those that were prepared...but most as with Jay that 9th day of March...did not know that this day would be a different day...and so I think on being prepared...they ask a question of how many that woke up those mornings knew it was going to be their last...We do not know how our day will be...but are we ready no matter what it entails...and so I include the next day's My Utmost For His Highest...

Missionary Munitions
"If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet."
John 13:14

Ministering as opportunity surrounds us does not mean selecting our surroundings, it means being very selectly God's in any haphazard surroundings which He engineers for us. The characteristics we manifest in our immediate surroundings are indications of what we will be like in other surroundings.

The things that Jesus did were of the most menial and commonplace order, and this is an indication that it takes all God's power in me to do the most commonplace things in His way. Can I use a towel as He did? Towels and dishes and sandals, all the ordinary sordid things of our lives, reveal more quickly than anything what we are made of. It takes God Almighty Incarnate in us to do the meanest duty as it ought to be done.

"I have given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you." Watch the kind of people God brings around you, and you will be humiliated to find that this is His way of revealing to you the kind of person you have been to Him. Now, He says, exhibit to that one exactly what I have shown to you.

Oh," you say, "I will do all that when I get out into the foreign field." To talk in this way is like trying to produce the munitions of war in the trenches - you will be killed while you are doing it.

We have to go the "second mile" with God. Some of us get played out in the first ten yards, because God compels us to go where we cannot see the way, and we say - "I will wait till I get nearer the big crisis." If we do not do the running steadily in the little ways, we shall do nothing in the crisis.

So I think on these things on how there is more to this life than just this day to day...There is a big picture that we only see parts...but I want to be ready for the crisis when it comes...and so then I include the God Calling that seems to tie in with this...and for some reason this starts to change around and the words of being killed seem to haunt me...how I have come to hate that word...but I have peace in knowing that Jay was ready...no he didn't say I want to go...but he was ready should that time come...something we all need to be able to say...

September 9 - Cultivate -- Yourself

In Thy Strength we conquer.

Yes! Your conquering Power you gain from Me. There can be no failure with me. The secret of success then is Life with Me.

Do you want to make the best of life? Then live very near to Me, the Master and Giver of all Life.

Your reward will be sure. It will be perfect success, but My success.

Sometimes the success of souls won, sometimes the success of disease cured, and devils cast out. Sometimes the success of a finished sacrifice as on Calvary. Sometimes the success of one who answered never a word in the face of the scorn and torture and jeering cries of his enemies, or the success of a Risen Savior as He walked through the Garden of Joseph of Arimathea on that first Easter morning.

But My success. The world may deem you failures. The world judges not as I judge.

Bend your knees in wonder before My revelation. The joy of seeing Spiritual Truths is a great Joy. When the Heavens are opened and the Voice speaks, not to all hearts, but to the faithful loving hearts.

Remember your great field of labor is yourself. That is your first task, the weeding, the planting, digging, pruning, bearing fruit. When that is done I lead you out into other fields.

Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh
manifest the savior of his knowledge by us in every place. 2 Corinthians 2:14

There was a story on the Focus tribute...and it talked of a man whose life was spared...and his son asked him what are you going to do with the rest of your life? There is a reason we are all here...a purpose...we can choose to ignore...or we can listen and learn...and get out in the game...out from under our fig tree...YES PENNY away from your kitchen table...