"What's Your Struggle?"

Somewhere in the history of Christianity, people started to think that if you followed Christ you would have no struggles in your life...boy is that wrong. Accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior does not guarantee that you will never have to struggle in your life. What accepting Jesus Christ does guarantee is that you will have someone you can lean on and call on in those times of struggle.

One of the things you can do is look at whatever your current struggle is and ask Christ to help you through it. Sometimes, as humans, we make the struggle larger than it actually is. So take time out talk with Christ and see if it doesn't lessen the feel or magnitude of the struggle your are coping with in your life.

When it comes to words I like to make acronyms out of them to help me remember the Christ connection. My acronym for "struggle" is struggling transforms redemption unleashing God's gracious loving embrace..."struggle."

As I shared with the congregation during Sunday morning worship (Sept. 7) my brother had a fantastic attitude when it came to life's struggles. Randy was the head high school football coach at Treynor, IA but unfortunately died of liver complications in 1994. He sent the following to his football team in the fall of 1993: "Never give up, no matter how things look...possess a positive attitude at all times that will allow you to rise above any adversity that confronts you and look at each obstacle that faces us and say BRING IT ON!!!!"

With Christ you can face all of your struggles with a positive attitude and rise above it with his help!

"Is Your Answering Machine On?"

Everyday we are inundated with thousands of sounds and messages. We are hit with commercials on the radio and television...not counting all the billboards we see when we are on the road. We also have so many activities that we have to go to or at least take our kids to every day. Although we seem to have time for a lot of activities we never seem to have time for God.

The most amazing thing about our lack of time for God is that all God asks of us is just a couple of minutes a day. I really believe that part of the problem is we think we have to have some sort of high and mighty prayer...nothing could be further from the truth. All we have to do to talk with God is to take at least five minutes out of our day. What you can do to enhance that time is to figure out if you are able to do it either in the morning, afternoon or night. Then start out by just being quiet...as scripture states "be still for I am God."

When I served three churches in Wisconsin, one of my children said what was a very profound statement to another child. I had just purchased an answering machine for the church office and one of my kids was telling another kid that I had purchased one. Of course the kid kept saying "so" and then he said, "why did your dad get an answering machine?" My child answered with "that is in case God calls and my dad isn't home." Wow what a profound and thought provoking statement.

It leads to the question are you listening to God when he talks to you or have you turned your answering machine on to receive his call? God talks to you everyday, but as we have aged we tend to stop listening. You know the voice it is that inner voice that if you ignore it is usually means you are going to do the wrong thing. So don't let God have to leave a message on your answering machine, but rather take time out and talk with God everyday.