How God blessed me today - July 23, 2006

God blessed me today because:

I have 3 healthy children. I don't take this for granted, but neither do I forget to thank my Father in heaven who gives them health.

My children all help my wife and I each month when we care for handicapped children so their parents can have a night out. This event is called "breakout" and is sponsored by Sugar Creek Baptist Church and is the brainchild of Ms. Barbara Waldhuber - a woman who loves children and the lord.

Because they work with children who suffer from Spina biffida, CP, autism, and many other undiagnosable illnesses, they understand how blessed they are and how blessed the other children are to be uniquely created in the manner in which they were made.

I am blessed because I have the honor and privilege of watching God guide my life. When I make foolish mistakes, He doesn't abandon or berate me - He gives me wisdom and sometimes correction, but most often hidden joy, so that I won't continue in my sin.

I am blessed because today in church, our children learned the parable of the talents in Matthew Chapter 25. This passage is very often misrepresented in churches today, because most expositors of this text think it focuses singularly on money. And, while the talent was a form of currency known to the first century hearers of Jesus' message, He wasn't speaking only about money and neither was He excluding it from the perview of His message. The bottom line is this: that God has given each of us gifts and talents and He expects us to use them for His glory - not ours. To use them for our own vainglory is blasphemy and greed of the highest order and will not go unpunished.

I remember an interview of the wife of some author, whose name I cannot remember. He apparently was the first American author to incorporate sex into mainstream literature and his racy novels were made into films which made him immensely rich. He would host parties on his yacht replete with cocaine and playboy bunnies.

When the interviewer asked his wife how she felt after his death, she said "I am the most miserable woman in the world." However, she was not speaking of the death of her husband as the occassion for her misery. She went on to explain how for decades, she sat by and watched as her husband paraded around the world with models and playmates, disregarding his wife and family. She felt as if she had spent her whole life for nothing. She also said that he had died miserably, in terrible pain and torment from a bout with cancer.

His cancer and her misery did not occur by mistake. When we use our gifts only for our own pleasure, that pleasure will last for a season. But eventually the season will end and tragedy will strike. This is not to say that tragedy doesn't strike those who are obedient to God - it often does. But such tragedy does not strike the faithful without purpose as it does those who are outside the will of God.

I would urge anyone who happens upon this blog to seek God earnestly and seek His blessings in your life. You can do this right where you are sitting. All you have to do is ask Him.