"Risk more than
others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than
others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.
" Cadet Maxim
…and be defiantly
thankful! Yes, thankful for the
adversity in your life, when others put you down because you stick up for your moral values, be grateful for their taunting. When others ask you to join in something you know is not right,
and you refuse, be grateful for the test.
For without
adversity we learn nothing. Without testing, we fail. Without
questions, faltering, or temptations we are falsely lead to thinking life is easy. We get spoiled. Then
something comes along and knocks us flat on our behinds.
When I was in my
twenties and thirties I thought if you
just lived as you ought, everything should work out, be okay. If you are sick,
you get well; if you get hurt it won’t be a lot. Now in my fifties, I finally see life is not about avoiding all those things. It’s
about building your faith to the point that WHEN those things happen you will
trust in God to see you through it.
Jesus was tempted
by the devil to give up all his suffering and enjoy a kingdom here on earth. We
too are tempted by the devil to the very same thing. Give up moral values, live
temporarily in this life and get all everything you want, whether its greed,
all the sex we want with whomever, all the drug taking, fast life choices, and
never, ever paying any gratitude to the one Creator who put us here.
But Jesus didn’t
take that bribe. Jesus, while carrying a
hundred pound cross, fell three times. He was God, why did He fall? Why
didn’t angels just hold that up for him?
Could it be He was showing us how to get up every time we fall? He was
showing us to always ask for God’s help when we fall?
While getting lashed with nasty bone crushing whips, Jesus hung on, he didn’t die
on the spot, but waited for more horrors. He was physically nailed hands and
feet to the cross to die, he didn’t give up until it was time, until he knew he had finished His mission on
earth; to offer himself up as a sacrifice for our sin.
How can we hear
the story of Jesus and not think of what he did for us? How can WE not do more
for others, for ourselves, by living a moral, value filled life after what He did? We don’t want to be made fun of, yet He was. We don’t
want to suffer, yet He did. And it was all for us, not one iota was for
himself.
People made fun
of him for risking more than what was safe, for caring more than others thought
wise, for dreaming of His Father in heaven who knew and loved Him. And Jesus left behind eleven
apostles whom He expected to carry on His Father’s church on earth and even
charged Peter, who had denied Him three times, with the power to get
people to heaven.
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