The meeting was short and I was only ½ hour late getting home! On my way out of the meeting though I got a call that one of the electricians who had gone to another site to look at a problem had been trying to get hold of me. I tried calling but kept getting a busy signal so I ended up calling from my cell phone on the way home. It really wasn’t a problem and he could have told me what he wanted to tell me tomorrow.
I had a comment yesterday (At xanga) that disagreed (in a nice way, thanks!) with my statement about the motives behind the church’s works. I will still stand on my statement based on the fact that God allowed me to be part of four different churches in a twenty year period before bringing me back to the one I am now attending. I was able to observe much and though I never want to tell anyone, one of my gifts is discernment. If you do a search on the Barna report, you’ll find out that the six largest churches in America spend about $50 billion a year on outreach and evangelism yet the number of Americans claiming to be Christians hasn’t changed for several decades. In fact, if you take into account that the population has grown, then the percentage of Americans claiming to be Christians has declined! Now what does that seem to indicate about the church and their efforts to evangelize? They are spending money on their own ideas and whims and have excluded the power of God from the equation. Their financial record doesn’t seem much different than the government, does it?
“To have Christ’s attitude in ourselves is to possess the motive of the Redeemer of the world; it is to be infused with the compassion of the One who prayer for those who crucified Him, ‘Father, forgive them’ (Luke 23:34). Such characteristics are simply unfamiliar with to us. To attain Christ’s mind, God calls us to a realignment of our thoughts, attitudes, and motives until we think and act in perfect synchrony with Christ’s nature. We will not arrive at this overnight; it is a lifetime pursuit. Still, it means we must set our goal not to be judgmental but redemptive in our motives.
“We have been granted access to, or possession of, the very mind of Christ (1 Cor. 2:16)! To think as Christ Himself is not merely a doctrinally based mind-set or a religious outlook, but a perspective shaped by a motive to bring redemption. If you truly desire Christlikeness, you will measure yourself by how aggressively you work to see mercy triumph over judgment.”
Hello again! xanga is on the fritz again and it's disgusting that I paid for a lifetime membership over there and can't even get my pages to load half the time. They are growing too much too fast and those of us that have been there for a while are the ones left hanging.
Work was again routine. Tomorrow I have to go down to one of the Locks & Dams to attend a meeting. I'm usually off work by 2:30PM but some genius scheduled this meeting for 1:30PM. If the meeting is limited to one hour, it takes an hour to get back to the office so I'll be at least one hour late. I don't like that.
I've been anxiously awaiting the cell phone bill to see if they've corrected the recurring over charge. The bills run from the 6th to the 5th but as of today (10th) the bill has not arrived or been posted on-line. I got my other phone bill and found it wasn't paid last month. I thought I'd paid it on-line a couple of days before it was due but can find no evidence that it went through other than the date I wrote on the bill. They usually send a confirmation and I print out a copy of the screen but can find neither. Amazing!
Major Mike: If you read this, I couldn't get your link to your Blogger site to work the couple of times I tried. Can you send it again?
Tonight I need to get back on the girls' room so we can put that behind us. One small wall is directly behind the shower/tub plumbing so I'm thinking of tearing the wall off and redoing the plumbing then making somekind of an access door which can be hid behind book shelves for future access. An ambitious project but one needed badly. I still want to do something with the living room and dining room floors plus upgrade all the electrical wiring in the house. It appears I need to get some ambition and accomplish a few more things around here.
I haven't selected an encouragement for today but I have been thinking about what motivates us to do His calling. I'm beginning to believe that most of the church reacts out of guilt or obligation and, though they attempt to accomplish alot of "work," they really haven't accomplished much of anything that is lasting to the kingdom. Our one and only motivation can be out of an intense love for Him and we can't acquire that unless we give Him time, time that involves our total attention, so that we might get to know Him as intimately as it is possible at this time. We have to know Him well enough to hunger to do the things He has called us do, again, not out of guilt or obligation but out of an unquenchable love for Him.
