Category: Devotionals

 ‘Waiting on a train’ is a good excuse in my hometown if you don’t use it every day. No one questions it, because it happens to everyone. Trains are a fact of life in Vinita, Oklahoma, a railroad town built at the junction of two train tracks in 1871.

Every citizen of Vinita, young or old, rich or poor, male or female, laborer or businessman, has learned to live his life around the train schedule. When a train is on the track across a main street in Vinita, all traffic stops.

There have been several train-vehicle fatalities in Vinita so the railroads have invested in gated flashing alarm systems at most intersections.

 Some drivers still want to drive around the gate arms meant to keep them from being hit by a train. When the lights start flashing and the arm begins to lower, even I groan and am sorely tempted to step on the gas and race to beat the train, rather than slow down and wait 5 minutes for the 10-mile-long train to pass. Or maybe I see that I might be able to make it to the next corner if I rush, so I make a sharp right, gas it but by the time I get there, the gate has started coming down there too, so I have to wait anyway.

The very thing that is meant to preserve lives has become a great source of irritation to most townspeople.

Paul said in II Timothy3:16 nkjv, “ All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”

In our busy life we have this tendency to bypass spending time reading and studying the word of God.  And then we find ourselves not living by what it says.

When the alarms flash in your conscience and the gate arm starts to drop, is your first thought, “How can I find a way around this without getting caught?” That should indicate it’s time to see what the Bible has to say about what you should do, not what you can get away with.

God sent His Word to direct us, to preserve us, to protect us, to live by.

            Let the past be the past, let it go.

            Let the now be the now, let it flow.

            Do not linger in the past,

            No longer live in fear.

            Let the past be the past, let it go.        

There is no past as far as God is concerned. When your sins are washed away by the blood of Jesus, you have no past. And from where God sits in eternity, time does not exist. There is no such thing as the future, because He sees the whole picture. It’s His plan, the victory has been won by Jesus Christ forever, and we can trust the future to Him.

 When the thought comes to you of all the wrong things you have done, let those thoughts spur you on to do right, but don’t let those thoughts linger on, tormenting you. God isn’t condemning you, He sent His Son Jesus Christ to die to save you from your sins and give you eternal life. If you have accepted Jesus as your Savior and Lord, any condemnation you might feel comes from the evil one or your own memory.

 Lay those ugly old scars of your past at the feet of Jesus once and for all, and never think about them again.

 In Philippians 3:13-14 kjv, Paul said, “Forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.”

On the other hand, when the thought comes to you of all the wonderful things you have done for Jesus, let those thoughts spur you on to do more, but don’t let those thoughts cause you to relax or quit,  because the jewels in your crown for years of faithful service to the Lord will outshine any star.      

God is the God of the now. Press on.

 

Every year when school was out, the other kids could be found playing baseball, roller-skating, riding bikes, or swinging, but I was inside reading a book. I got my first library card when I was in the 3^rd grade at 8 years old.

If you come to my home to visit, you will probably be amazed at all the books, magazines, and newspapers cluttering my home. Why is it that I have such difficulty discarding books? It all goes back to my mom and dad who trained us children to value books. From the day a little cloth book was put in our baby hands, we were taught to love them. Don’t tear the book. Don’t write in the book. We love our books, don’t we?

My school teachers influenced my love of books. At the beginning of the school year, when books were given out, I opened the first page to the label that showed who used the book the year before and  proudly entered my name on the next line. If the book was new, we went through a procedure of “breaking in” the new book, by opening up to the middle and running our fingers down the middle, then opening to another place in the book and doing the same. We were taught to never open the book and bend it backward which would break the spine.

I can only think of a few times in my lifetime that I have actually thrown a book in the trash. Most times it was because the book was badly damaged, but several times it was because it un-Biblical. How did I know? Because I know what the Bible says.

It is said that banks train tellers to recognize counterfeit bills but giving them the real bills to study. If you know what the real thing looks like, you should instantly know when something is counterfeit.

In 2 Timothy 2:15 nkjv Paul says, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God, a worker who does not need to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”

How do I know the truth? I study the Bible for myself.

 

 

 

Instead of a birthday cake, when I was a kid I had a blackberry cobbler and ice cream for my birthday in July. We always picked blackberries in June and early July.

Our family watched the blackberry vines closely on our trips to the farm, till just the right time to pick the berries. Grasping the wire handles of our gallon lard buckets, we spread out over the field to pick, all of us kids under Mama’s watchful eyes. Blackberry vines are covered with stickers and the best berries are hidden under the green foliage, so you must work for them.

Picking blackberries was a whole family project, including aunts and uncles. Sometimes we picked berries along the country roads, in the ditches, and open fields belonging to distant relatives. Frequently we picked plums and persimmons too.

A  couple of years we sold some of our blackberries to Dairy Queen and Mama returned some of the money to us kids, which we used to buy blackberry milkshakes at the Dairy Queen. I have laughed at the irony of that over the years, but somehow just putting our berries in ice cream was not the same as a Dairy Queen milkshake.

Occasionally while we were picking blackberries we might see a garden snake, on a very rare occasion, some poisonous snake, but a bunch of kids stomping around, yelling, and having fun runs off snakes. The worst danger when picking blackberries is chiggers, tiny red mites that love to burrow into the skin, producing an itchy allergic reaction.

Satan lurks around us like a garden snake, a poisonous snake, or a chigger. If he can’t get to you one way, he will find another way to attack you. He is like a sneaky thief always on the lookout for some way to torment you.

Jesus said this in John 10:10 nkjv “The thief does not come except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy. I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.”

Jesus’ life in the Spirit is the abundant life, which surely includes blackberry cobbler and ice cream.

I’ve almost always had a Chevy to drive. Uncle Cecil bought my first one, a 1953 two-tone green 2- door sedan, in 1964 for $15 from some farmer, who told a car dealer, “Before I sell it for that price, I will set it in the barnyard and let the horses eat out of the trunk.” Uncle Cecil and I hosed the chicken manure out of the inside and cleaned the hay out of the trunk, then he went through the engine cleaning it up until he got it running. Then he made me learn the parts of the engine, how it worked, how to change a flat, how to change the oil, before he let me drive it.

  In the fall of 1966, my old 53 Chevy kicked the bucket, dropped a rod through the oilpan, and Uncle Cecil came to the rescue again. A 1950 Studebaker, with the cab chopped off behind the driver’s door, so it was shaped like an El Camino. Originally moss green, he painted it yellow with a paint brush, two coats of paint on everything except the trunk lid, because he ran out of paint, so the trunk lid was pea green.

 “Ol’ Bullet Nose” was the ugliest car ever made, but it sure beat walking. We joked that you couldn’t tell whether it was coming or going since it had a point on both ends.

 Now I drive a 10-year-old fire-engine red Chevy Tahoe with 60,000 miles on it now.  I drive down the road in an “overstuffed  living-room recliner” power seat, with air-conditioning, CD player, cruise control, and all the power under the hood that I will ever need.

No, those weren’t the good old days. Waitressing was hard work for 25 cents an hour plus tips. Driving an old beat-up car. Dragging Main Street on Saturday night for entertainment. I do not wish to go back to those days.

These are the good old days.