Days of Hope
  • Home
  • Chaplain's Blog
    • Ramblings & Ruminations
    • Healing Scars
  • Volunteer
  • Give
  • About Us
  • Newsletter
  • Our Staff

His Nature Made Peace with Ours

12/18/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
        Ephesians 2:14  “For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility…”  ESV

             I was taking our new dog for a walk.  He saw something and bolted fast enough that I lost hold of the leash.  I called, but he was gone.

            The previous owner of this Cairn Terrier had said, “Watch him, he’s a ‘Toto’ dog, like out of The Wizard of Oz, and you remember Dorothy don’t you?  Chasing her dog?”  I must have muted the warning bells, because as I was walking out the door she threw in a barking shock-collar and said in a sweet southern accent, “And you might need this too honey.”

            Now I found myself driving in the car with my daughter looking for this pooch.  After a long search, I got mad and threw one of the homemade dog-biscuits my daughter had made out the window and said, “Fine!  If that stupid dog doesn’t want to be at our house, serves him right!  I’m done looking.”

            Crocodile tears rolled off my daughter’s cheeks.  I said, “Okay, okay, we’ll take one more trip.”

            Low and behold, right where I’d thrown that biscuit was our dog.  Then it occurred to me:  My daughter adopted this dog and I hadn’t yet.  To me, it’s just a dog; to my daughter it’s family.  I needed to adopt him too if this was going to work.

            We have a flesh-nature part of us that will never want to obey God’s law until we are made new (1 Corinthians 15:52).  You can even use a shock-collar on yourself, but it won’t change it.  The good news is that God adopted you by making peace with your nature so he could love you permanently.  This love frees us to repent and run to God when we mess up instead of run away from him.


0 Comments

Go Figure

12/11/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture George Dantzig
Hebrews 11:4 “By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.”  ESV
                George Dantzig was late one morning for class at Berkley.  Two problems were written on the board.  In a rush he assumed they were homework.

                Two days later George handed in the answers to Professor Neyman saying, “Sorry these took so long.  I thought they were harder than usual.”

                The following Sunday Neyman knocked on George’s door at eight o’clock in the morning.  George was then informed that he’d actually solved what was known as two of the most famous unsolved equations for statistics.

                When I read the passage in Hebrews about God accepting Abel’s offering and counting him as righteous, I thought, “Now God looked at Abel as a man in good standing with him because his offering was right.  Abel had offered his best lamb.  If God considered Abel righteous (in good standing) for his lamb, how much more righteous are we in Jesus our lamb?”

                That’s how God solved the equation of restoring our broken humanity and making us complete.  Now we need to take that answer into every single broken part of the landscape of our life. 

              What could you do if tomorrow you wake up and see yourself perfectly whole, not tethered by the baggage of your past, and not hindered by the splinters in your mind caused by guilt and shame?  I’m guessing if that reality was lived out in your life, God would use you to solve the impossible.  Not only the impossible in your life, but in the lives of many others. 

               Don’t let the seemingly inescapable stress and struggles of today put a lid on your future.  Remember, nothing is impossible with God and you can do all things through Christ (Luke 1:37 & Philippians 4:13).





0 Comments

    Aaron Jeffers

    Pretty good guy. Associate Chaplain at Days of Hope. Happy husband, father of three, writer and speaker.
    Loves to talk about yurts.

    Archives

    August 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Picture
Copyright 2020   |   Po Box 12   |   St. James, MO 65559