| Whatsoever
Things Are True
by Dan Coburn Pastor, Emmanuel Baptist Church pastordan@mtida.net I once heard the testimony of a woman with regard to her disabled veteran husband. I believe their name is McCleary, and her talk was entitled “Every Day I Dress a Hero”. He is one of those remarkable men who doesn’t let something like losing both arms slow him down. In fact, he has been very successful doing motivational speaking around the world. Anyway, the gist of her talk was centered around an incident with her daughter, who as a teenager, had invited her dad to one of those father daughter outings. She had never known any weakness or vulnerability in her dad, but this morning, when they got up, dad asked her to help him with his tie. (He always wears a tie). She called her mom crying uncontrollably and told her how sorry she was, and that she never realized what her mom had been going through all these years, having to take care of dad. Mom’s response was the title of her talk; “It’s OK darling. Don’t you see what a blessing I get? Every day I dress a Hero”. This so effected me, that I bought one of His talks on tape. On it, he told of a walk he had on a beach where he encountered two young women collecting sea shells. He had come up from behind them, and watched them for a time, while he had gone unnoticed. They were carefully picking out the “perfect” ones, and tossing the broken, blemished, or chipped ones aside. He spoke up: “Are you finding any good ones”? “Yea, but mostly broken ones, they aren’t good for anything”; one of the young ladies replied as she raised up and spun around in one fluid motion. There she saw before her, Mr. McCleary in a bathing suit, with no arms. Her countenance fell. He spoke again, not to brow-beat her, or to make her feel worse, but with the most sincere loving tone, he said “even broken things have a purpose”. They visited for a while, and parted. A few months later, Mr. McCleary got a letter from the young lady. In it, were some pictures of her mantle at home. On it were jars full of broken sea shells. They are now fast friends, and correspond regularly. Now let’s turn the Spiritual Switch. Every one of us, without exception, is broken. Let’s establish that right now. You may have the perfect body, but you are broken inside. Something someone did to you, or worse yet, something you did or said to someone else, a long time ago, that you have cried over a hundred times, and wished you could take back. Maybe they forgave you, maybe they haven’t. I’ll bet, however, that you haven’t forgiven yourself. And worse yet, in your heart of hearts, you are convinced that God cannot forgive you. This is Satan’s great lie # 41. Here are some verses of Scripture I want you to read. Really. Get out your Bible and look these up, because they are life changing. God didn’t choose you because you were biggest, strongest, wisest, or smartest; (you weren’t), but because He loved you. Deuteronomy 7:7-8. Now look at Romans 5:8. God commended His love toward us in that while we were still broken, (sinners) Christ died for us. He is not looking for perfect people to bring into His country club, He is looking for broken people to make whole again. So why really, would He forgive you? Isaiah 43:25. “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins”. You see, it’s not about you, it’s about Him. He forgives you because He said He would, and He is bound by that. These aren’t the words of some preacher, or even a denomination. These are the promises of The Almighty God. They are, however, conditional, John 3:3. He really does love you, without regard to your broken condition. |
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