Let Your "Yes" Be "Yes"

Greetings again. As we walk with the Lord at work, we sometimes struggle with situations that contradict our Christian ethics. I've heard of Christians who disassociate their work lives from their personal walk with Jesus because they feel that their business requires them to occasionally "bend" rules in order to be successful. We must remember who we represent when we say we're Christians, and consider how our actions will reflect on our Lord. Here is a devotional by Os Hillman of MarketplaceLeaders.org, that speaks to this point:

Matthew 5:36-37"And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make even one hair white or black. Simply let your 'Yes' be 'Yes,' and your 'No,' 'No'; anything beyond this comes from the evil one"

Imagine for a moment that you are living in Jesus' time. It is before Jesus has begun His public ministry. He is a carpenter in your local town of Nazareth. You have asked Jesus to make a table for you. You're on a deadline and you must have it in a week. You agree on the price of $100 for the table and the date of one week for completion. A week later you arrive to pick up the table. You lay your money down on the table and Jesus says, "Mr. Johnson, I am sorry but the table is not ready. I ran into complications. Also, I can no longer honor the price I gave you. It is now $150 instead of $100."

Two years later you hear about this same Jesus who is preaching to the local townspeople. How are you going to view this Jesus? You probably won't give much credence to His message because of your personal experience.

Our lives have an ability to reinforce the message we stand for, or they can violate it and make it totally ineffective. This literally happens all over the world in different settings with Christian people. Our message becomes ineffective because we have not done what we said.

I know people who, when they tell me they plan to do something, I can only expect them to follow through about 50 percent of the time. I am sure you have had the same experience. Words and commitments are made with little meaning behind those words. However, I know others who will follow through almost every time. The only time they don't is when something falls outside their control. I quickly learn whose words have substance behind them.

There are times when we are unable to perform or deliver what we promised due to outside influences. The key to turning these potentially negative circumstances into a witness for Christ is communication. If we are unable to pay a bill on time, we must communicate with those we owe and make a good faith effort to resolve it within our means. In these cases, God's purposes are being performed as well if we seek to do the right thing.

Do your words mean anything to those who hear them? Do you make commitments and fail to follow through on them? What would others say about how you follow through? Ask the Lord today to show you how you are doing in this area. You might even want to ask three people who are the closest to you how you fare in this area..

A WORK PRAYER
Lord, help me this week to let my “Yes” be a simple “Yes” and my “No” be a simple “No.” Please help me to be a person who reflects You in my words and my actions. Lord, I ask that you would help me to live up to my word and to follow through with what I say I will do. I pray all of this in the name of Your son Jesus. Amen.

Bill

More Than We Can Bear

Greetings Brothers and Sisters in the Lord. I'm sure some of you have found yourself in the position of deciding whether or not your current circumstances are more than you can bear. I can honestly tell you that every time I think that's the case in my life, I'm informed about someone's trial and that am grateful I'm not having to live through. It's about putting your faith in God, and trusting He will never give you more trial than you can bear. Here is a devotional by Randy Kilgore from Marketplace Network Inc. that speaks to this point:

Romans 8:35, 37-39 (NASB) Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?…But in all things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Sometimes, life is not about moving forward. Sometimes the struggles we face are simply so overwhelming that it takes all the strength we have merely to hold on.

George Lacy was a public school teacher when he and his wife Minnie decided to take their vocational skills to the mission field. In 1903, the couple and their five children journeyed to Saltillo, Mexico to organize and operate a school for girls, the Madero Institute.

Joy turned to sorrow in December, 1904, when a daughter fell ill with Scarlet fever. She died so quickly doctors weren’t able to diagnose her illness. Shortly after that, a son also died. Not knowing what was wrong but desperate to escape the illness, Mrs. Lacy and the three oldest children boarded a train to return to Arkansas while Mr. Lacy buried their two youngest children, his heart breaking. Before the train reached home, the three remaining children also died of the fever. Lacy’s letters to the Foreign Mission Board describe in terrible simplicity the utter despair he and his wife felt in those hours. He writes these words: "Sometimes it seems more than we can bear…"

Some of you are facing just such a time right now. The pain of the loss of a loved one; the struggles of caring for elderly parents who no longer remember you; the uncertainty and fears of grave illness; the loss of a job; the debilitating and misunderstood darkness of depression; all of these and so much more are real parts of a fallen world. In these moments it often seems more than we can bear. We cry out to God with questions, sometimes even in frustration and anger. When the answers aren’t apparent, it often feels like He isn’t there, or isn’t listening.

He is there and he is not silent, though the sound of His voice may be hard to discern and the touch of His hand may not be easily felt.

These are the times when the work of the Holy Spirit goes on in you even in fits of rebellion, even in the very face of spiritual doubt. When you can no longer pray, the Holy Spirit lifts your heart's deepest prayers for you. When you cannot move forward one more step, the place where you pause is inhabited by a Trinity of compassion. Paul understood this when he built his list in Romans 8 of the things which cannot separate us from the love of Christ. He knew clearly what we need to remember when the pain is too great: It is not necessary for us to hold on to the love of Christ in those difficult times because He is doing the work, making certain nothing that is done to us, indeed nothing that we do ourselves, separates us from His love.

George and Minnie Lacy decided to return to Mexico, to face the place of their greatest despair. Forty-six years later, when their ministry ended there, their work left behind a trail of children whose lives were touched by the same love of Christ that sustained the Lacy’s in their deepest trials. It was not their own strength that moved them through the storm. It was the promise that Christ made that "I will never leave you nor forsake you."

He has not left you either.

Bill