Ecclesiastes 12:10

  There are two ways to lose weight, lower your food intake or increase your activity.  There are two ways to better the bottom line, increase your income or cut your costs.   If you get to thinking about it lots of improvement come when we either delete something negative or insert more of the positive.  Either can work but the best is if you do them both.  Sometimes in our attempts to remove negative things, it leaves a hole that habits can flow back into. Other times we want to increase good activities only to find them crowded out by bad ones.  In spiritual matters, it is true as well. If we want more fruits of the Spirit, we need to put to death the deeds of the flesh. If we want to walk in the light, we must avoid the darkness. If we want to curb unwholesome talk, we need to add grace to season our speech.  Sometimes to “add to” we must “take away” as well.

  Harry Houdini started out as any ordinary magician. He called himself the “king of cards” yet he competent but not particularly skilled sleight-of-hand artist.  Yet there was one thing that set Houdini apart, He was an escape artist.   It wasn’t just the prepared acts he created that mystified audiences. He would challenge Scotland-yard coppers and Siberian prison guards to try to contain him. He invited the public to devise contraptions to hold him, including nailed packing crates, riveted boilers, wet sheets, mail bags, and even the belly of a whale that had washed ashore in Boston. It seemed no one or nothing could hold him.    The key to his escapes wasn’t a physical one, however, it was mental. As one writer told it was his belief that the means to escape was possible and was within his reach. He believed he could. And then he made it so.   That’s an idea we need to have as well. Too many times we are trapped in a prison of can’t. We can’t over...

  One of the all-time classic Far Side cartoons involves a young man unable to enter the Midvale School for the Gifted. He is desperately pushing on the door right below the sign marked PULL.   It’s funny cause it’s true. It is not the entrance that keeps us out but how we use it  In Matthew 7:21-23 we read,” " Not everyone who says to Me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?'  And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you who practice lawlessness .'”  Many folks think they can push their way into heaven if they do all the things they think are what get them there. But that’s not how you enter. The door opens when we step back and let the Lord open the way. Doing his will, not ours. Submitting ...

    A teacher once gave me some advice, on a test paper all the above is a lot of times the right answer but rarely is it in life.  When the claim is ‘everyone’ or ‘always’ it usually isn’t accurate because there is most likely some exception.    Consider Romans 3:23, “ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”. A continuous person might respond, “Jesus never sinned”. While they would be right, they are missing the point of what Paul is saying here.   His point here is many think they are the exception. They lived good enough. They never sinned bad enough. They followed their religion enough.  Yet here Paul declared we have not done enough, we have fallen short because of sin   It may not seem like it but there is an I in all. There is a U in all as well. No matter how much we ignore it or deny it, sin is there. There is none righteous, not even one.   Until we see our need for forgiveness, we will never understand w...