Modern Art

           An old story tells about Liz, who goes to her first show at an art gallery and is looking at the paintings. One is a huge canvas that has black with yellow blobs of paint splattered all over it. The next painting is a murky gray color that has drips of purple paint streaked across it.

            Liz walks over to the artist and says, “I don't understand your paintings.”

            “I paint what I feel inside me,” explains the artist.            

            “Have you ever tried Alka-Seltzer?”

            Paul was pleased with the young Christians in Thessalonica, who clearly had the Spirit of God living inside of them. This was evidenced by the lives they lived among the people of their region. That lifestyle in turn created listening ears on those outside the body of Christ.

            What is on our inside impacts what is on our outside. With the Holy Spirit living inside of us, we should have something beautiful come out.

Real Repentance

It was a nationally televised NFL game. The Miami Dolphins were playing the Los Angeles Rams. The Dolphins head coach, Don Shula, destined to become the winningest coach of all-time, watched the referee make a call against his team, with which he vehemently disagreed.

Shula let the ref know how he felt. He used language that many would consider inappropriate. An open microphone picked up Shula’s words, and millions throughout the country heard him.

The next week, the office of the Miami Dolphins was inundated with letters from fans all over the United States addressed to Don Shula. The fans were letting the coach know how much he had let them down.

Every person whose letter included a return address received a personal apology from Don Shula. He made no excuses. His typical response ran like this, “Thank you for taking time to write. Please accept my apologies for the remarks. I value your respect and will do my best to earn it again.”*

Real repentance is not simply feeling sorry about what we do wrong. Real repentance means being so sorry, we want to cease what we’re doing wrong and make amends for it.

Distress that drives us to God does that. It turns us around. It gets us back in the way of salvation. We never regret that kind of pain. But those who let distress drive them away from God are full of regrets, end up on a deathbed of regrets (II Cor. 7:10.) THE MESSAGE

*For further reading, consult EVERYONE’S A COACH by Don Shula and Ken Blanchard and THE DANIEL DILEMMA: THE MORAL MAN IN THE PUBLIC ARENA by Peggy Stanton.

Lost

Can you remember ever being lost?  I remember when I was about four or five years old, I went with my mom and grandmother from my hometown to the city of Tyler, on a shopping trip.  I say I went; perhaps it would be more accurate to say Mom and Granny drug me to Tyler. 

I grew up in the town of Winnsboro, not exactly the industrial center of the South.  At that time Tyler, with a population of 50,000 people, seemed like a metropolis to me. 

When we arrived at Tyler, our first stop was a dress shop.  Yippee, you know I was having fun then.  About two minutes in that dress shop and I was a basket case.  After a great deal of hard work, I managed to gradually ease away from my dress-happy kinfolk and make way for a life on my on.  But it wasn't long before I realized I was lost.  I was just starting to get scared when Mom found me.  Whew!  Close call, but I made it without breaking a sweat.

Next, we proceeded to eat Mexican food at a restaurant.  An hour in there and I was bored stiff!  On the way out I thought I would do some more exploring.  Again, I got lost.  But just like before, Mom came up before I got  too far away.  So my spirit of adventure remained intact.

Our final stop of the day was K-Mart.  Now that was paradise.  Unfortunately, Mom didn't know how to shop at K-Mart.  She completely ignored the toys!  Well, I had about all that I could take.  So when she wasn't looking, I sneaked off to the toy section. 

I had big problems though; I couldn't find it.  The more I looked for it, the more lost I became.  It wasn't long before I got scared, real scared.  I had truly done it this time.  I was REALLY lost. 

Here I was a midget in the land of giants.  All I could see was women's skirts.  The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that I was doomed to spend the rest of my life running into skirted women at K-Mart.  I even began missing Mom and Granny.  Finally, when I could take it no more, I began crying out for my mom.  

Finally, as tears were streaming down my face, a very nice K-Mart employee asked for my mom's name.  She then took me to the front of the store where they called Mom's name on the intercom.  In the meantime, seemingly half the population of the U.S., all of them mean strangers, stared at a child sobbing hysterically—me. 

Soon Mom came, and when she picked me up and held me, dried my tears and hugged me, I knew everything was going to be okay.  All I could think of was, "Why did I leave my mom?"

You know where I'm going with this don't you?  Whenever I mess up, really blow it, and I see the reality of my sin and repent and come back to God, it's just like Mom hugging me and wiping away those tears.  Isn't it funny how, so often, it is out of our sorrow of sin that we find the joy of God?