Calvin Synod Herald, 2017 (118. évfolyam, 1-12. szám)
2017-01-01 / 1-2. szám
10 CALVIN SYNOD HERALD And, don’t confuse God’s purpose for your life with investing all your time in ‘busyness.’ Yes, many people confuse the business of God with the busyness of their agenda, both in their lives and in the church. Thirdly.... Go into the New Year with: His Provisions These verses tell us that God has already many plans. Read that again and pay attention to the tense... “For I know the plans I have for you... that's planning that has already taken place" ... that’s planning that has already been done. You don’t have to do any intense or stress invoking searching to find out what God’s plans are for your day, your week, your month, your year, and your life. All of those are short and long range goals that involve action plans to accomplish. Go to God, ask Him for the plans that He has for your life, and the provisions, or the help that goes along with performing those plans. Again, we say We begin with God, ask Him about HIS plans, and offer ourselves to Him to carry out His purposes. God is not going to purposefully plan for your life, that will intentionally fail. He won’t do that. However, the plans that He has for your life can fail...and, any failure that has occurred on any plan of God that you were following is because you were at fault, not God. See those verses again... “For / know the plans I have for you, ” declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart". This is the key to finding God’s plans for our lives, His purpose for our lives, and receiving His provisions for our lives is all found in that last verse, verse 13 “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. ” Have you done that? Have you sought God with all your heart? That’s the only way to plan for this upcoming New Year, to seek God with all your heart. SMT CHANCiF. OF ADDRESS FORM send it to: Mr. Wilburn Roby 264 Old Plank Rd. Butler, PA 16002 waraj r@embarqmail.com Name................................................................... Subscription No................................................... Old Address:........................................................ New Address:....................................................... A Time to Be in Earnest Charles Dederich said, “Today is the first day of the rest of your life.” I suppose that’s a saying better for morning prayers than for evening vespers. Maybe it’s a thought better said to teenagers than to folks in retirement. But morning or evening, to young or old, the truth still lies there. 1 take this title for a meditation írom RD. James, who recently died, a woman who rose from middle class obscurity to the House of Lords, based on her ability to write good English prose, usually in the form of murder mysteries. She took the saying from Samuel Johnson, “At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.” Having never kept a diary, she wrote “So tomorrow, on 3rd of August, I shall write the first entry in a record I propose to keep for one year, from my seventy-seventh to my seventy-eighth birthday.” P.D. James added “Will I be here at the end of this year? At seventy-seven that is not an irrational question . . . it is only, I think, in age that we fully realize the transitiveness of life.” Dag Hammarskjöld, formerly Secretary-General of the United Nations, who died in a plane crash in 1961 while on a cease fire mission, also wrote a diary called Markings. One day, in 1951, he wrote: The present moment is significant, not as a bridge between past and future, but by reason of its contents, contents which can fill our emptiness and become ours, if we are capable of receiving them. Sometime or another we have read the familiar passage from Ecclesiastes about “a time for every matter under heaven.” (Ecclesiastes 3:1) It speaks of events that happen to us, birth and death, and events that happen because we take charge, planting a seed and plucking the harvest. What is the season this day—today? What is it time to do? What is it time to refrain from doing? We may well ask this about today. And ask it prayerfully before God who has placed eternity in our hearts. The parable Jesus told of the three servants given talents for investment until the Master returned applies well to our lives. Certainly, we want to be one of those servants who invests in a way which the Master will approve on his return. We clearly do not wish to be told that out of negligence or laziness or distraction we have proved as to be an unworthy servant. These thoughts lead us back to today. Yesterday is past. Tomorrow lies beyond our grasp. “Carpe Diem!” Grasp the day. This day! What challenges lie before you? Challenges within your realistic capability? It may be as
