Do you ever feel like a failure?  Your response might be, “Which day?”  Dr. David Jeremiah who is the Senior Pastor at the Shadow Mountain Community Church said, “I am not a failure because I failed at _____.”  Dr. Jeremiah is right on target with his words of encouragement.

You become a failure when you do not learn from your mistakes.  When you fail; and you will, stop and look at the situation and find what caused you to fail and then make adjustments to avoid that again.  Easy said; but, not so easily done.  Yes, I know.

Here is the tremendous truth.  When we fail, we have an advocate, Jesus Christ, who is waiting for us to approach His throne and ask for forgiveness.  Look at the words of Hebrews 4:16, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”  By the way, “boldly” means confidently.  We do not just burst in and demand forgiveness.  We go humbly in repentance and request forgiveness.  Then God’s mercy keeps back what we deserve and His grace gives us what we do not deserve.  If you have fallen into failure get back up, request forgiveness and get back to it, whatever “it” is.

So, how are you doing?

A friend shared with me the other day that growing up he was a horrible baseball player.  He said one game the only hit he got was because the pitcher threw the ball at his bat.  He later became a great baseball player.

Would you like to know my friend’s secret?  I know you do.  His secret to success was his father.  His father took an interest in his baseball career and came to all his games and demonstrated that he believed in his son no matter how poorly he performed.  My friend never gave up either.  When someone showed him they were behind him he began to practice insatiably and became a star ball player.  He did not quit. The Bible would put it this way, “He held fast”.

Look at Hebrews 4:14, “Seeing then that we have a great high priest, that is passed into the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our profession.”  Our High Priest is watching us like a father at a baseball game and His desire for you and i is that we don’t give up.  Hold fast my friend!

So, how are you doing?

I am not going into politics, period.  However, the last election showed us all something.  We have become a nation with our hand out to government.  Nobody wants to work.  Border jumpers are rampant in our country and are getting jobs that the people of our great nation are too proud to do.  Another way of saying it is that we have become so lazy that we don’t think we should have to do such jobs.  Really!  Wake up America!

What happened to an honest days work for an honest days pay?  We have gotten greedy and lazy so much so that we expect.  This is called entitlement.  Get over that right now.  It is high time for people to get off the couch or wherever and get busy.  People are literally dying and going to hell every day and we just sit by with our hands out waiting for a handout.  Here is an idea.  Go give someone a hand up instead of waiting for a handout.

The Word says in Hebrews 4:11, “Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief.”

So, how are you doing?

As you can tell by the title today we are going to look at the topic of apathy.  This is a growing problem among professing Christians.  One man asked a class in a Christian high school, “What is the difference between ignorance and apathy?”  On young man raised his hand and said, “I don’t know and I don’t care.”  (true story)

This was our future leaders right there and now look at the sad state of affairs our nation is in today.  It is no wonder.  I would expect and unsaved person to be apathetic toward life; but, Christian you and I are without excuse in this.

The early Church turned the world upside down as they went all over publishing the truth of Jesus and salvation for all men, women, boys and girls.  All we get accomplished today is turning our coffee cups upside down.  We have all the programs and this and that; but, if we have all that and our neighbors die and go to hell…  Think about that.

Fear means to frighten, i.e. (passively) to be alarmed; by analogy, to be in awe of, i.e. revere (taken from the Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance).  So, if we fear God as we ought then we will not allow ourselves to be trapped in apathy.

So, how are you doing?

When I was growing up my Grandpa and my Uncle always had a garden on my Uncle’s farm.  I love fresh vegetables (with the exception of spinach).  I remember picking turnips out of the garden and eating them.

You know God’s Word is much the same way.  It is a feast of spiritual food.  Over the next few days I am going to give you some remedies out of God’s “Let Us” patch.  I hope you enjoy them.

The prophet Jeremiah gives us some good counsel in Jeremiah 15:16, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O LORD God of hosts.”  It is so important that we spend time daily in God’s Word.  Just like we eat meals to keep our physical strength up, we need to do the same for ourselves spiritually.  Many Christians are weak and anemic because we are spiritually malnourished.

So, how are you doing?

Here is a paragraph from a missionary friend:

“I was made speechless last Thursday night, which as you can imagine is hard to do. I had a man, who claims to have been a Christian for over twenty years call me and tell me that his son was getting married last night. He had asked his Dad to ask the blessing before the meal at the reception. The father wanted to know how to do that. I just could not imagine being saved twenty years and not knowing how to say grace before a meal. When I regained my speech, I tried to help him with what to say. I have not yet heard how things went. It says a lot for the maturity of many of the “Christians” here.”

So, why would a man who professes to be a Christian have to call a Missionary Pastor from America for advice on how to pray?  My guess is that he never practices his prayer life.  How sad.  Imagine if you married someone and never spoke to them.  I am guessing that the relationship would not sustain very long.

Yet, we are guilty of the sin of prayerlessness.  It is basically the same.  Oh, we want God to save us from our sin and take us to Heaven when we die; but, that is as far as it goes.  We want to keep Him like a puppet on a string.  All we have to do is pull the string and we get what we want.  This ought not to be!  Sadly, the polls show that even so-called “clergy” do not spend much, if any, time in prayer.  It is high time we got on our knees and spent quality and quantity time with Him in prayer,  Look at Matthew 26:40, “And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep, and saith unto Peter, What, could ye not watch with me one hour?”

So, how are you doing?

The other evening my wife and I were searching for a particular passage of Scripture.  It turns out to be Jeremiah 29:11.  I begin to think about that particular passage and a thought came to me that was not original with me.  Someone said, “If God had a refrigerator your picture would be one it.”

That would be a huge refrigerator.  I understand their thought and intent with their statement.  God loves us supremely.  Most families decorate their refrigerators with their children’s artwork.  It is a proud place to prominently display such masterpiece quality artwork.

I get overwhelmed thinking about God, the Creator of the universe thinks about me.  He has thoughts of love toward me.  Even now as I write this the tears scald my cheeks.  Tears of gratitude and bewilderment that God loves even me and thinks about me.

Oh yes, Jeremiah 29:11, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end.”  The “expected end” would be home in Heaven for eternity with Him.  Thank You Jesus!

So, how are you doing?

When I was in Junior High School a friend arranged to be a go between for me to hopefully draw a particular young girl into dating me.  Can you see a picture of the RMS Titanic in your mind’s eye?  I received letters from her that my friend had brought to me.  This lasted about a week.

Then one day the girl and her real boyfriend cornered me in the gym and proceeded to tell me off (politely speaking).  I was embarrassed beyond belief as you can imagine.  I felt so betrayed and angry.  Unfortunately, I got even with “my friend”.  Not really, because you never really get even.  I wish I had just let it go; but, I did not think I could.  All these years later I could, but not then.

This was a cruel joke and my “friends” had a lot of laughs on my behalf.  Just remember what the Scriptures tell us in Psalm 74:20, “Have respect unto the covenant: for the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty.”  Today this reminded me that no matter how dark things are around me that I must continue to walk in the light of Jesus Christ no matter how bad I get hurt by others.

So, how are you doing?

I would like to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you, my readers, a Happy Thanksgiving.  If it were not for you I would have no outlet for my writing.

Thanks for reading!

David Dale

The other day my wife and I had the privilege of traveling with a family we love very much.  We were taking a journey of about 30 to 40 minutes.  this family is like our own family.

I had planned out the seating arrangement in our van.  My friend would drive and his father would rid up front next to his son.  M friend’s wife and my wife would sit in the next rows of seats.  I would hold down the back seat (which is way too easy these days).

When everyone got into the van, my friend’s father was the last one to get in.  He commented on being given the front passenger’s seat.  My wife old him we wanted him to have the front passenger’s seat.  He told her, “You treat me just like my family treats me.”  I felt a hot tear begin to descend my cheek.  Mission accomplished!  That was our goal.  We wanted this dear saint of God to have the place of honor, the front passenger’s seat.

Though I am not this man’s son I sure felt like it for that evening.  The Scripture says it like this in Malachi 1:6, “A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honour? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the LORD of hosts unto you, O priests, that despise my name. And ye say, Wherein have we despised thy name?”  When you have the opportunity to honor someone, do it.

So, how are you doing?