The Ride Of Your Life

The Ride of Your Life

I am reading directly from the web-site news release.

” SANDUSKY, Ohio, Jan. 9, 2003 – Cedar Point will race full speed ahead toward the future of thrill-riding when the famed amusement park/resort debuts the tallest and fastest roller coaster in the world for its 2003 season. Named Top Thrill Dragster, the $25 million steel scream machine will be Cedar Point’s 16th roller coaster – more than anywhere else on Earth – and will be one of the largest single investments in the 132-year history of the park.

Top Thrill Dragster will be a coaster of epic proportions: with an extraordinary 420-foot-tall first hill at a 90-degree incline, speeds of 120 mph over 2,800 feet of track and a twisting first drop of 400 feet at an imposing 90-degree angle, this colossal thriller will wow riders with its dramatic world-record-breaking dimensions. Termed a “strata-coaster” for its monumental height, Top Thrill Dragster will be the first and only roller coaster in the world to break the towering 400-foot-tall milestone.”

That may thrill you and excite you but frankly it doesn’t make a bit of difference to me. I reached my roller coaster tolerance level one afternoon at King’s Island over twenty years ago. I walked away and have not been on a roller coast ride since. I just decided it wasn’t fun and just because the crowd was standing in line to do something insane didn’t mean I had to.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had the ability to make those kinds of choices in life?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could see what life was about to deal us around the corner?

Life happens. The good the bad and the ugly. Life happens to all humans. If you are a human you are going to experience life. It is a dangerous world. It is dangerous to be a human.

The question to ask is not why things happen. They happen because that’s life. The question that we need to be asking ourselves is how am I going to deal with this situation. Christ followers of all people have the advantage of not only having a God who cares and will aid through the storms of life but we also have a book that contains many words and examples of how to deal with life’s issues.

Exodus 15:20-26 (The Message)

“Moses led Israel from the Red Sea on to the Wilderness of Shur. They traveled for three days through the wilderness without finding any water. They got to Marah, but they couldn’t drink the water at Marah; it was bitter. That’s why they called the place Marah (Bitter). And the people complained to Moses, “So what are we supposed to drink?”

So Moses cried out in prayer to God. God pointed him to a stick of wood. Moses threw it into the water and water turned sweet. That’s the place where God set up the rules and procedures; that’s where he started testing them.

God said, ‘If you listen, listen obediently to how God tells you to live in his presence, obeying his commandments and keeping all his laws, then I won’t strike you with all the diseases that I inflicted on the Egyptians; I am God your healer.’ They came to Elim where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees. They set up camp there by the water.”

There are at least four lessons to be learned from this Old Testament story. Alternations of changes happen in all of our lives. One day the sun is shining and things seem to be all going in our favor and yet the very next day something happens that rocks our world. The question is, how do we handle these experiences when they come? Sometime they are brief and sometimes they last for extended periods.

The bottom line is that they will come. We are all affected by the changes that happen in our lives. Recognition of and yielding to God’s will is the one thing that enables us to recognize God’s hand in every circumstance of life.

1. The Proving we must Anticipate. Are you Bitter or Better?

You and I must accept the fact that the Marah experiences of life will come to us all.

Proverbs 14:10 states that, “Each heart knows its own bitterness.”

The question can be asked. Why has God brought me here? What is His object in this? Did this just happen?

In the case of this story the children of Israel were being led and guided by God. He was proving and testing them. “That the place where God set up the rules and procedures; that’s where he started testing them.”

It may make you a little uncomfortable but I have to give you the whole Bible and the big picture.