Written by Chuck Swindoll, these encouraging devotional thoughts are published seven days per week.
It’s easy in the busyness of travel to become a wax figure. Untouchable. Picking up the “circuit lingo,” the clichés of the road, and losing touch with reality. Resist that sort of superficiality. Stay available. Stay real. People need a real, authentic you. Not perfect, authentic.
Architects and construction people use precise measurement to ensure a precise result. They don’t go by how they feel. Both carefully mark their work by inches and by feet. Not even seasoned builders rely on guesses and hunches. They stay with the standard. The Scriptures are your measuring tool for making sure the teaching you receive is straight and true. Keep comparing.
“Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they’re doing.” Jesus managed to utter those penetrating words through bleeding, cracked lips, swollen from the noonday sun. Impaled on that cruel, Roman cross, He interceded on behalf of His enemies. What a magnificent model of forgiveness!
Let’s be painfully candid here. I’ve had my own share of arguments, and you’ve had yours. I’ve had some that were never reconciled. Thankfully, most ended in a renewed friendship. I’ve learned through the years a few strategies that have proven effective in facing difficult disagreements.
My challenge to you is to live a carefully examined life in an unexamining age. That will result in your maintaining a carefully examined ministry in a day when virtually anything goes. Whatever happens, keep your eyes on the goal. However difficult, don’t quit. Though the obstacles are extreme, the stakes are eternal.
It was that kind of remarkable attitude Paul and Barnabas consistently maintained throughout their missionary journey. The two Antioch-sent servants faced and overcame countless and extreme obstacles with a relentless determination to stay focused on the goal.
A sentence in the diary of James Gilmore, pioneer missionary to Mongolia, has stayed with me since the day I first read it. After years of labouring long and hard for the cause of Christ in that desperate land, he wrote, “In the shape of converts I have seen no result. I have not, as far as I am aware, seen anyone who even wanted to be a Christian.”
On that first journey Paul took with him just enough to live on, sufficient clothing to cover his nakedness, a heart full of hope in God’s truth, and a confidence in God that would keep him faithful. That’s what held him together. That’s what steeled him against the tightening jaws of mistreatment in the ministry.
Remarkably, though laying lifeless in a pool of his own blood, Paul got right back up and walked back into the city from which he had been dragged and left for dead. I mean, is this missionary determined or what? True grit.
When Paul was rejected, he didn’t quit. As my good friend and wise mentor, Howie Hendricks, often says, “Where there’s light, there are bugs!” The brighter Paul’s light, the more the bugs. And in that situation, those bugs had stingers filled with poison.
Sign up to receive Chuck Swindoll’s Daily Devotional in your inbox seven days per week.
Insight for Living is committed to excellence in communicating the truths of Scripture and the Person of Jesus Christ in an accurate, clear, and practical manner so that people will come to an understanding of God’s plan for their lives, as well as their significant role as authentic Christians in a needy, hostile, and desperate world.
1-30445 Progressive Way • Abbotsford, BC • V2T 6W3
info@insightforliving.ca
1.800.663.7639