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Everyone put your hand out. Imagine with me that you have a lemon in your hand. Feel how cold it is since you just took it out of the refrigerator. Feel the two knobs on the ends? Ok, now take a knife and cut the lemon in half. Careful! Don’t cut yourself. Oh, look at the juice run down over the sides. Now, put one half down and just hold the other half of the lemon. Now, look at the inside of the cut lemon. Lean down and smell the lemon. Get a good full sense of the lemon fresh scent of the just cut lemon. Ok, now squeeze the lemon. See the juice ooze up and cover the surface of the cut lemon? Now - lick the lemon. That’s right! Lick the lemon. Ok, who feels like you have more saliva than you did a minute a go? How can that be? It was only pretend! The reason is because your body reacts to that which your mind thinks about.
Can it be that the average person spends one-fifth of his or her life talking? That’s what the statistics say. If all of our words were put into print, the result would be this: a single day’s words would fill a 50-page book, while in a year’s time the average person’s words would fill 132 books of 200 pages each! Among all those words there are bound to be some spoken in anger, carelessness, or haste. Today in the Word, June 15, 1992.
Paul Little made this observation “I was frustrated out of my mind, trying to figure out the will of God. I was doing everything but getting into the presence of God and asking Him to show me.”
The clock is my dictator, I shall not rest.
It makes me lie down only when exhausted.
It leads me into deep depression.
It hounds my soul.
It leads me in circles of frenzy, for activities sake.
Even though I run frantically from task to task, I will never get it all done,
For my ideal is with me.
Deadlines and my need for approval, they drive me.
They demand performance from me, beyond the limits of my schedule.
They anoint my head with migraines,
My in-basket overflows.
Surely fatigue and time pressures shall follow me<...
A.W. TOZAR: Contemplating the fact that more than 10,000 thoughts a day pass between our ears, ’Our thoughts not only reveal what we are, they predict what we will become. We will soon be the sum total of our thoughts’. The Holy Spirit uses the nourishment of the Word of God to rewrite our computer and renew our minds.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt got tired of smiling that big smile and saying the usual things at all those White House receptions. So, one evening he decided to find out whether anybody was paying attention to what he was saying. As each person came up to him with extended hand, he flashed that big smile and said; "I murdered my grandmother this morning." People would automatically respond with comments such as "How lovely!" or "Just continue with your great work!" Nobody listened to what he was saying, except one foreign diplomat. When the president said, "I murdered my grandmother this morning," the diplomat responded softly, "I’m sure she had it coming to her."
--James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988), p. 318.
Help me to realize that it was not the healthy who reached out to you. They bunched up in crowds, but it was those who suffered greatly who reached out to grasp you. It was the people in the streets, not in the sitting rooms of society that groped for your garment. It was needy people. People with out stretched arms. People with empty hands. People who had nothing to offer but the faith that you could make them whole. I confess, O Lord, how often I have followed in the crowd pressed around you. Yet how few times have those brushes with you changed my life? I have touched you, but only in the rush hour of religious activity. Sunday after Sunday I take my part in the crowd as I sit through the service. I sing the hymns, hear the sermon. I read my Bible, say my prayers, give my money. I attend the right seminars, tune in to the right programs, read the right books. How could I be so close your presence yet so far from your power? Could it be that my arms are folded? Could it be that my hands are full? I pray that if my arms are complacent, you would unfold them in outstretched longing for you. And if my hands are full, I pray that you would empty them so that I might cling only to you. (“Intimate Moments with the Savior”; Ken Gire)
THE BEST ESCAPE
Escapism is usually thought of as a bad thing, because it is a running away from reality. But we need to see there is much reality that we need to escape from. The stress and tension all around us is real, but we have no obligation to be in a state of constant reaction to it.
If we can escape and be at peace in the midst of it, let us praise God for this kind of escapism. Sleep is escapism God has built into our life, and it saves our life everyday. Building a house to retreat from the weather is escapism. Taking a vacation is escapism. Carrying an umbrella is escapism. Life is full of perfectly valid escapism.
And so is the escapism of the Christian who learns to retreat into the presence of God and bathe in His peace...
: On Tuesday morning September 11, 2001 Dawn Robinson followed her usual morning routine while getting ready for work. Which consist of her morning quiet time where she prays for God’s leadership throughout the day. Shortly after arriving at work in New York City she made her way to her office in the south tower of the World Trade Center. At 8:45 a.m. she heard a loud boom and looking out her window saw smoke from the north tower. A voice came over the intercom and informed everyone that no was in danger and stay where they where. Dawn says that immediately she felt a compelling urge to get out of the building. Then she said she had a very intense feeling of Closter phobia. So she immediately began making her way to the stairs. Dawn then says, that about 75% of the people she came in contact with were following the advice from the intercom system and where going back to their offices to continue working. Never the less Dawn continued making her way down the emergency stairwells. When she made it to the 42nd floor at 9:03 a.m. Flight 175, a bowing 767 hit the south tower slamming into the area of the building where Dawn’s office was located. God put an urging in Dawn hearts. What if she would’ve brushed it off? What if on Tuesday morning Dawn skipped her quiet time, or didn’t pray for God’s leadership on that day?
Time management from The Unleashing Connection, Winter 1990, p. 3
"In one year, the average American will read or complete 3,000 notices and forms, read 100 newspapers and 36 magazines, watch 2,463 hours of television, listen to 730 hours of radio, buy 20 records, talk on the telephone almost 61 hours and read 3 books."
