Titus Tuesday: GOD will supply but we must apply!
GOD-morning, GOD-afternoon, GOD-evening depending on what time of the day you wandered in.
I had the pleasure of talking with a young lady last evening about some things she is facing in life. She’s a bubbly, energetic, joyful woman. She’s been going through a rough patch of late, experiencing some going into new territory and growing pains. I so very much can relate and so I wanted to speak with her and encourage her that “You can do it!” I think we ended up encouraging each other; which truly isn’t that just what life is about? We learn from the old, some experienced wisdom. We gain possibility of what can still be, from the hope-filled young. Both are needed for joyful growing and growing pains. The older wisdom reminds us to just catch our breath, the younger reminds us to breath in the breath of fresh air, and together young and old come together to form a perfect unity… or at least that is how it should be. For me, I’m glad I get to experience such blessings in life.
I don’t like to watch some young folks continue to get wisdom from someone who thinks you have to experience all the sinful, sorrowful, stumbling things, in order to have fun or to feel like you are a grownup. I do like when I see someone even in their younger years offer up a plate of some GODly wisdom, even practical wisdom. As my new assistant manager says, and quite often I might add =) “Jeannie, we all have something to learn and something to teach each other.” It’s quite true, and although some people might not believe that, it’s also quite Biblical.
Years Ago and So Far Away and Yesterday
Don’t you love how children say that. As if they’ve lived forever. While older people will generally say, “Just the other day…” The time frames can be similar yet the perspective is different. To youth everything lies ahead of them, but everything seems to far off, or forever ago. To the aged everything seems so fleeting and so recent. Go ahead ask even a mom who is seeing her son become a teacher and a daughter who is in law school (me). I’ll tell you how I still see them both and remember them as wee little bouncy blessings about the house running in their footy pj’s. The scuffle of the sweet sound on the kitchen floor as they zoomed by as if life, even while scurrying feet pitter-pattered off in one direction, in a moms heart moments of growing up are frozen in the minds eye and heart forever and always. Moments that are now so far away in watching your children grow from boy to man, from little girl to a woman, you feel within you the moment, the sounds, the experience as if it’s all there to behold before your eyes. Yet, as the song say’s…
“Doesn’t Anybody Stay In One Place Any More?”
Nope, they sure don’t, and basically never have. We just want that. We get a bit secure in what we’ve got and we don’t want GOD messing with the plans we’ve made. We don’t like GOD’s little funky monkey wrenches that He throws our way (even if you are like a sweet friend who just loves monkey’s–especially sock monkeys–but then who doesn’t, right?) Oops, in case you haven’t noticed I have a gift of talking on a bunny trail, no worries though. I have also the gift of talking about 5 different things in ten minutes, and somehow I can bring them all together tied up into a neat little subject. Or so I think, and so therefore I am going to now. See, I’m getting old, my mind is not on what the future lies ahead of me, but what I’m instilling in the now, well, in the “who’s” of the now. My assistant mgr. is spot on. We do indeed have something to teach and something to learn from each other. Sometimes what we learn is what not to do. Sometimes we learn this is the way it needs to be done.
Which now brings me straight back to the beginning of the trail of talking with this very endearing younger woman. She had the attitude. Yep, she’s got spunk, she’s got attitude. She so reminds me of me when I was young. She’s sensitive, she’s a ruffian, she’s a toughy. Deep deep down in her heart though, she’s a softy. Basically she’s a walking talking human who has emotions of all sorts and sizes. She is after all human, so why is it when someone experiences emotions that they are feeling, we try to turn them off. They are GOD-designed and therefore just need to be, and then they need to be GOD-tweaked. We can’t go around smiling when someone tells us they’ve had a loved one die. Nor can we continue to go on crying when someone shares with us some joyful experience. We have to have some GOD-balance and some GOD-wisdom. Basically we need…
Titus 2
A God-Filled Life
1-6Your job is to speak out on the things that make for solid doctrine. Guide older men into lives of temperance, dignity, and wisdom, into healthy faith, love, and endurance. Guide older women into lives of reverence so they end up as neither gossips nor drunks, but models of goodness. By looking at them, the younger women will know how to love their husbands and children, be virtuous and pure, keep a good house, be good wives. We don’t want anyone looking down on God’s Message because of their behavior. Also, guide the young men to live disciplined lives.
7-8But mostly, show them all this by doing it yourself, incorruptible in your teaching, your words solid and sane. Then anyone who is dead set against us, when he finds nothing weird or misguided, might eventually come around.
9-10Guide slaves into being loyal workers, a bonus to their masters—no back talk, no petty thievery. Then their good character will shine through their actions, adding luster to the teaching of our Savior God.
11-14God’s readiness to give and forgive is now public. Salvation’s available for everyone! We’re being shown how to turn our backs on a godless, indulgent life, and how to take on a God-filled, God-honoring life. This new life is starting right now, and is whetting our appetites for the glorious day when our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, appears. He offered himself as a sacrifice to free us from a dark, rebellious life into this good, pure life, making us a people he can be proud of, energetic in goodness.
15Tell them all this. Build up their courage, and discipline them if they get out of line. You’re in charge. Don’t let anyone put you down.
To Love and To Be Loved:
You can fake love, you make love something it’s not. One thing is for sure, we were designed to love and to be loved. Not everyone is wired for such, and some will try to fake it, and it will at some point fail. Some just love like the dickens and they get hurt, fall down, and allow themselves the ability to get back up and love again. Love, as another song says, takes time. Time be it from the experience of the past, or the present, or the Hope of a future, is on our side; so saith GOD! Because all the time we are given is given for us to make purposeful, useful and give meaning to. So today, while it is still called today:
Hear the voice of experience, allow yourself to be touched not only by what was or is, or might be, or even the could have been, but by the Hand of GOD, by His Handy work to be done within you. Rooted and grounded, you and I are His love interest. Doesn’t matter if you believe in Him, believe His Word, He is! He is the Great I AM! He has been from the beginning and is now the desire to see you and I molded and made after His will. Strong will, keeping you from accepting Him and His Son, not so good. Strong will tweaked by GOD and used for His plans, Great! And it will be this GREAT GOD ALMIGHTY who will stick it out with you covering the past, working with you in the present, and leading you into the future!
You can gain a lot of knowledge, and that is so useful for sure. You also need to know that often knowledge it puffs you up into something, someone, and when you get a little life prick that comes with living, you deflate and find yourself lost. Knowledge is good if you remember, that as good as knowledge is for making a living, love is what really builds you up. Love as I said, takes time. Don’t sweat the small minded people, don’t rush into calling someone a friend, who is really just an acquaintance. Make wise use of why GOD brings someone into your life, but also know that if GOD removes them, it is for our good and also for us to continue to remember, for us to use to continue on in bringing Him glory. So, set your affection first on things to be done from above, from His will, and all the rest will be nicely applied from His vast supply. He’s got a wealth of Wisdom in His Word. He wants us to carry that wisdom forward and into those who we are at some point going to leave behind. That doesn’t always have to mean death, it just might mean a season in time.
Love Takes Time, by Bryan Duncan
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=squC1URnrR0
Jeannie Bee
Bee It Ever So Humble 