Encouraging Folks to Walk With God
 
TODAY  -  Making a Name for Ourselves 

It’s hard for a man to leave a mark in this world to show that he ever existed. We might as well do it the easy way with our finger in the sand. The mark will last a little while ‘til the tide comes in and carries it out to sea.

Put it on a building? Good for a hundred years if it’s downtown. But here comes the demolition crew and your building and your name are a cloud of dust in a 60-second evening news story.  How about getting a highway named after you? The Lee Highway is doing pretty good for General Robert E. Lee of U. S. Civil War fame. But his mansion in Washington was desecrated by incorporating it into the Arlington National Cemetery.

The best most of us can do is to get our name on a grave marker.  Even then, who’s going to know what you looked like or where you lived in a hundred years? Your life will be that little dash─ that little hyphen between your birth date and your death date.

The best hope for leaving your mark and maintaining your memory is to make arrangements with the God who made you.  He keeps the names of those who belong to Him.

Jesus said: …rejoice not, that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.  (Luke 10:20) 

And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life.  (Revelation 21:27)

Not only does He take care of your name and memory, He also sent His Son to die on the cross in your place to save you from eternal ruin in Hell. Christ’s death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead is the foundation for your life.  We cannot save ourselves any more than we can give birth to ourselves. 

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ (1Cor.3:11). 

After you are saved, for the rest of your life you are building upon that foundation. God wants you to build your life out of gold, silver, and precious stones and to receive a reward from Him for doing that. You want to avoid the wood, hay and stubble in building your life.

Now if any man build upon this foundation:gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble. Every man's work shall be made manifest: for the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is.  (1 Corinthians 3:11-13) 

God provides the foundation and we are to build upon it. One day God will examine what we have built upon His free gift of salvation, the foundation He has provided for us. 

Read your Bible daily and pray for God to guide you and give you His power to live for Him. Meet with God’s people regularly to worship God and to fellowship with other believers for mutual strength. Obey everything the Lord shows you to change and everything He shows you to do.Ω

 

 

 

 

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First Post! 02/16/2012
 
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I remember it well, the summer of 1958. Pastor  Bert Singletary welcomed me to work with him at the Kelly Avenue Baptist Church  in Pensacola, Florida. We were visiting some“shut-ins” and this one “would be special,” he said. And so it was.

An older couple lived there and the  lady of the house was bedfast with crippling arthritis. The husband worked  part-time and did all the house work, including meals. He greeted us, and
excused himself to go back to work.

She was cheerful and seemed so glad  to have visitors. Her day bed was in the living room against a wall. Above the  bed was a bulletin board with maybe a hundred pictures on it, held in place with  thumb tacks. People, especially preachers, sent her pictures and asked her to
pray for them daily. And she did every day by name. As they wrote her letters  and updated her on their situations, she made a note of it and praised the Lord  for answered prayer. If a prayer had not yet been answered, she was cheerfully  confident that the answer was on the way.

Pastor Singletary asked her to  sing for us. I didn’t know what to expect. She was ready, always, to sing her favorite hymn:  "Are You Living in the Shadow of the Cross?"  She knew all the verses and she threw herself into it at the top of her voice. Her voice was shrill and  penetrating, not musical at all. Her hands were crippled and she was bedfast.


As she sang, it looked like her eyes were penetrating the ceiling and  she was staring into the throne room of Heaven! It seemed that she had not  noticed she was bedfast or that her hands were crippled or that she really did  not sing very well. She had her people to pray for, who kept her company as she  called their names and she was known for singing her hymn into the street  when she got carried away and no one was around to hear her, or so she
thought.

We visited her several times while I was in Pensacola and it was  always the same. The Lord’s people don’t get to retire. They can serve Him in  bed if He deems it to be so. It’s our attitude. God’s power dwells in our  attitude!

A  merry heart maketh a cheerful countenance: but by sorrow of the heart the spirit  is broken. (Proverbs 15:13)

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