Tag Archives: learning

Random Devotional Thoughts

Who is Your Boss?

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        I came across an article the other day that I thought was worth passing on. It certainly had some challenging thoughts in it! The writer made the statement that our work for the Lord should not be the most important thing in our life! Whoa! That can’t be right, you might be thinking. What could be more  important in our life than working for the Lord?

    The article goes like this (with abbreviations)……      

“Separate unto Me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them” (Acts 13:2b).

There is a great need among Christians to discern the difference between the Lord of the Work and the work of the Lord. How easy it is to confuse these two things and treat them as one and the same! Yet the difference before God is quite vast.

      The writer was visiting a ministerial luncheon once, consisting of local pastors. He was introduced and asked to say a few words. He wondered what he could say to these pastors? But the Lord had already prepared his heart with a special word just for them. He said, “Brothers, I have come this day to remind you of one thing: the work of the Lord is NOT to be the most important thing in your life.”

He allowed his words to sink in for a moment and the silence was deafening. He could sense their thoughts as these pastors silently wondered what could possibly be more important than the work of the Lord. “Brothers, the Lord of the Work is more important than the work of the Lord,” he said, and then sat down.

He continued in this article by saying that he was still growing in this revelation. He had to be constantly reminded by the Lord, “Look, I am more important than your ministry. I am your priority. This is My work, not yours. I reserve the right to separate you for service or place you on the shelf. I reserve the right to send you forth or keep you at home. The Lord of the Work is more important than the work of the Lord. You keep saying this, but you do not always practice it.”

He had to come to realise that he had to be governed by the Lord of the Work, not the work of the Lord.       The Lord of the Work does not change, but the work of the Lord is constantly changing. The Lord of the Work governs the time, the place, the people, the provision, and the assignment. All these things may change as the Lord of the Work sees fit. He sets one up and brings another down. He opens doors and closes them. He leads us to speak or bids us to remain silent. We want to go out and the Lord tells us to stay home. We want to stay home and the Lord tells us to go. He is the Lord of the Work.

     We cannot understand everything that God does. In humility we need to bow down and say, “You are the Lord of the Work, and I am only a worker. You are the Master, and I am the servant. You know what You want and what You need far more than I do. I only see a portion, but you see all things. So I submit myself and what I do to You!”

    This is the only safe way. Can we submit ourselves to the Lord of the Work? Can we offer Him our gifts, our talents, and our abilities on the altar and let Him direct things? I believe that almost every apostle, prophet, or pastor that has gotten off track has done so because of this very thing – making the work of the Lord preeminent over the Lord of the Work. God gives them a gift, or a calling, or a ministry, and they begin working at it until they no longer need to be governed by the Holy Spirit. People can get blasé about what they are doing for the Lord….they are almost too gifted. We need a little less gifting,  and a lot more brokenness, learning to lean on the Lord instead of our own capabilities!

Random Devotional Thoughts

Hiding God’s Word.

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    Our grandchildren have grown and are now having problems which we can’t help taking on our own shoulders as we watch them flounder along making the same mistakes that we once made. Now we are brought up with a round turn by health problems which we didn’t foresee, and we find that we have new needs. We have to downsize; things we once did with ease, now take all day. Then when we come to the next big-0 birthday, we realise that there is very little time left, and maybe no quality time at that. Our minds are not as clear as they used to be, and it is an effort to think of the future and spiritual things.

   For those of us who have endeavoured to follow the Lord during our life time, we have a foundation of knowing the Scriptures and can draw on these from our memory bank for the times of weakness. Our Lord says that His Holy Spirit will bring these things to our remembrance in our times of need, but there has to be something there in the first place for Him to work with.

    So while we have the energy, let’s make sure we store up God’s Word in our hearts against the time that we may not be able to get “fresh manna” due to illness and bodily weakness. Let’s remember that He has promised He will be always with us, and as we go through the door, He is the only One who can go through with us. Let’s get to know Him better and seek to live for Him in every way, and we will come to that door with full confidence and anticipation of what lies beyond!

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Tough Things to Learn.

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       I wrote for the last two weeks, of my experiences in training roses to grow straight and tall to make standard mop-top rose bushes. There are so many lessons that we can learn from the unpleasant things that come our way in our lives, and yet how beneficial they can be to us in the long run! It brought to mind the experience of a friend of mine who had this hard lesson to learn early in her married life…..

     She and her new husband had had a severe  disagreement over something, so she flounced off back to her mother expecting to find some sympathy. But her mother was a very wise woman, and after listening to her daughter’s story and grievances, she said, “My dear you can’t stay here now. This isn’t your home any more. You chose to live with your husband and you are going to have to go back to him before dark. But come and have a cup of tea before you leave!”

   So the young woman sat down with her hot drink and calmed down enough to go back to her new home with one lesson learned. She had made her choice and had to abide by it. Of course she loved her husband, but she was going to show him a thing or two, she thought. Instead, it was she who needed to learn a lesson or two!

   Then when she got home, she found that the door was locked! It didn’t matter how much she knocked and banged on the door, it stayed firmly shut. She wasn’t even sure if her husband was at home. So she sat down in the porch nursing her angry thoughts. She couldn’t go back to her mother….she had made that very clear. And now she couldn’t get into her home either. The door just stayed locked with no movement inside.

   Finally her husband relented and unlocked the door so she could go in. She had learned her second lesson well, and never again did she allow her temper get the better of her. It took tough measures for her to learn these two lessons, and it is the same for the roses that find themselves tied straight to a stake with their other laterals cut off to make them look up. It takes these tough lessons for us to learn these things too, but as we yield to our Master Gardener, so He can make something beautiful of our lives. We learn to look up into His face to help us overcome our petty hurt feelings and say, “Not my will, but may Yours be done!”

Grandma's Stories, Stories for Teens

The True Story of Tarore, Part One

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Tarore was a little Maori girl who lived in the Waikato part of New Zealand back in the times when there were only a very few white people living there. The Maori people still hadn’t got European clothes to wear, nor did they have proper houses to live in. Things were still very primitive in their villages. Tarore didn’t really know much about the white people. She lived in the village with her parents and her little brother.

She often heard her father talking with the other warriors about things like battles and utu (revenge) and she knew there were often wars going on between the different tribes near where they were living. If anyone was killed, even if it was an accident, one of that person’s relatives would have to kill another person to get even.

Tarore knew that white people had books that they could read, and there came this longing into her mind, that she wanted to learn to read. If only she could get to where the white missionary lady lived, she might teach her to read, she thought. She told her father (Ngakuku) one day about this, and how much she wanted to be able to read.                                                                                                                           “What good will that do you?”, he asked, “It won’t help you to get food to eat!”

But nothing put Tarore off. Every now and then, she would ask her father to let her go and see the white  lady. At last, he said “Yes”, and Tarore was so pleased. She could hardly wait to leave and go.           She trudged along the forest trails and over the high hills between their village and the new town on the coast where the missionaries lived. When she arrived at the house where the missionaries (Mr. and Mrs. Brown) lived, she was almost too afraid to walk up the path and knock on the door. But she got enough courage to do this. Mrs. Brown came to the door and saw this little Maori girl standing there in her flax  skirt holding her little kit-bag with a few things in it. Mrs. Brown knew enough of the Maori language to understand what Tarore was saying.                                                                                                                    “Of course we will teach you how to read”, she said kindly, “But you will have to live with us here in the house and learn our ways first”. Tarore was overjoyed and soon learned how to wear the strange sort of clothes that Mrs. Brown gave her. She also had to learn how to sit at a table and eat her food off a plate with a knife and fork. She found this very strange at first….it was so much easier and quicker to eat with one’s fingers! But because she couldn’t wait to begin her reading lessons, she quickly did as she was told.                                                       She had other things to learn too. How to sleep in a proper bed instead of on the floor, and then how to make it the next morning. How to have a bath and keep her hair tidy and clean. Everything was so different!

At last the day came when she could begin to learn to read. She picked it up very quickly, but also had to learn how to spell words out and how to write them too. She also learned about the Bible and how it was God’s book for everyone to read. She was so pleased that she would be able to learn to read from this book.  The part of the Bible that Mrs. Brown used to teach Tarore to read from,  was the  part called the book of Luke (in the Maori language it was Ruka). Mrs. Brown taught her in the Maori language from a Maori translation of the Bible.                                                                                                             After some months, Mrs. Brown told Tarore she had learned enough to go home and read to the whanau (family). Mrs. Brown prayed as she watched Tarore trot off  wearing her green dress and carrying her little kit-bag with her precious copy of Luke in it, “Please dear God, keep her safe and help her to be able to tell her own people about You”.

Tarore made her way home and was so happy to be able to read to her family as they sat around the fire at night. At first her father,  Ngakuku refused to listen.                                                                                   “That’s just stuff for women and children” he said.                                            But after some weeks, he began to listen and one day, he said,                “Those are the words of truth from the One True God”.

Shortly after this, he and some of his men made a journey off through the bush, taking Tarore and her little brother with them. Tarore took her precious copy of the book of  Luke with her, and at night  she would read it before lying down and then put it under her head as she went to sleep.

(This story will be continued next week)