Skip to main content

Barnacles

   This New Year I resolved to scrape away some barnacles.

  No, I don’t own a yacht.  This isn’t the nautical type of barnacles. It is a term I recently heard in a financial discussion.  There it referred to items that attach themselves to our bank account. That gym membership we don’t use, a trial of Pandora we forgot to cancel, and that yearly fee we don’t think about till it is due. They are those things that attach to your money and slow down your ability to make it grow.

  But this idea isn’t just for better finical planning. Life has barnacles. Things you get stuck with that are not useful anymore but we can’t seem to shake them off. Bad habits, odd obligations, time vacuums. We might think they were once useful but now they just help drag us down.

Therefore be careful how you walk, not as unwise men but as wise,  making the most of your time, because the days are evil.

Ephesians 5:15-16 

  I don’t think I’ve met the person yet that has more time than they need. There is always something coming up to fill the void. That is why we must be careful to redeem our time, lest it is wasted on things that are not of benefit.

  Want to have more time the year to study the Bible to pray, to reach out to others to share the gospel? It might mean we have to do a little scraping on the things in our lives that have latched on to our time that don’t really need to be there.

  It can be amazing what we can free up if take the effort to get rid of what we don’t need.

  

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Until Midnight

    In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back.       I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mighty Gulf

  It is hard to get people on two sides of an issue to come together. Each has their own viewpoint, their perceptive, their own foibles, their own understanding.  To gain any common ground there must be something in common. Something or someone that can bridge the gulf between the two.   Could there be a greater gulf than there was between God and man? How could a holy perfect God find a way to connect to the fallen, imperfect mankind? How can one without temptation connect to those who are beset by it? How could limited mortal beings understand an omnipotent eternal God?   In 1 Timothy 2:5, we read, “ For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus .” The phrase mediator here describes a person that bridges the gap, a go-between. Jesus was one who could stand in both worlds. A perfect holy one who can understand our temptations, a man who would die yet live eternally, One who was God yet became flesh and dwelt among us. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

  Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair   It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission.  It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...
Post a Comment
Read more