prayer life | Courage for Today

Your Road Map for Loving Others

I remember one particular occasion when my best friend and I were driving down the main highway on the way to Florida. In those days, there were no GPS Navigational systems. We were armed with an old fashioned paper road map of Georgia and Florida. Off we went on our great adventure. For the most part, we followed the map and stayed on the main Interstates and highways. At one particular point in our journey, we both spotted what appeared to be an interesting dirt road. Being the adventurous souls we were, we decided to take the dirt road and see where it led. We calculated that we were a little ahead of schedule, time-wise, so why not? We didn’t see this particular local, small road on the map so we were just curious enough to want to check it out. We drove over holes and ditches and rounded curves sliding from side to side. It was a blast—-until we drove over a ditch that was just a little too deep for our wheels. We hit the ditch and the bottom of the car slammed into the ground and shook the tailpipe lose on the car. Luckily, the car was still driveable. Somehow, we managed to move the car from the ditch and quickly drove back to the main highway, continuing on to Florida without a muffler and sounding like an old Logging Truck. I don’t know how we made it without annoying the police, but somehow we did. We managed to have the muffler and tailpipe repaired while we vacationed in Florida. It would have been much easier had we just stayed on the main highway, but we couldn’t resist the temptation to take the road less traveled. Even though we had a Map showing the correct route and path we should have taken, we couldn’t resist the urge to be adventurous. It was a choice we made and, unfortunately, we made the wrong choice and paid a price.

I think we would all agree that the Bible is our road map for Life. Speaking for myself, I wish I followed the map more often. The other day I was reading a passage in 1st Peter which gives us one of those clear road maps we all need. 1st Peter Chapter 4, verses 7-12 says to be of sound judgment and keep fervent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of sins. Sometimes, having a fervent love is fairly easy and sometimes it’s extremely difficult, depending upon the person and the situation. Choosing to fervently love others is a choice, just like when we chose the wrong road to travel. Making the wrong choice in how we love others often leads to bad consequences just as our road trip did many years ago.

Here are 4 things that I try to remember to strive for that have helped me over the years when dealing with others, especially those that may mistreat me. You could say that this is my road map for loving others:

A Sound Mind: We must show patience and love when dealing with others, especially those that mistreat us. We all expect others to rise to our level. We must be willing to meet others where they are and that takes patience.
A Submissive Prayer Life: We must have a personal prayer life and also pray for others, submitting our Will to God’s Will. If we’re honest, we’re all selfish looking out for ourselves. It’s amazing how much stronger your prayer life becomes when you pray for others needs instead of just your own.
A Selfless Love: We should all have a passion for helping others based on our gifts, abilities, and resources. Again, selfishness comes into play here. Don’t be afraid to get involved with others and help them meet their needs. You’ll be blessed and others will too.
A Spoken Witness: We must allow Jesus to speak through us and work through our lives. It doesn’t do any good for God to speak to us if we don’t act. Have courage to be the witness and example to others that you know you should.

We’re all faced with roads to travel and forks in the road to take, especially when dealing with others. Make sure you follow God’s Map and take the right course so that your love for others will be strong.

“Lord, thank you for reminding me today of the importance of following your direction. Thank you for reminding me to be of Sound Mind; have a Submissive prayer life; have a Selfless love for others; and a Spoken Witness for You.”

Our Prayers Have No Expiration Date

Faith

I have to admit that I am not extremely technically inclined. I have been trying to figure out what has been causing my laptop to function slower and slower over time, but I have not had much success. I have looked at everything I know to look at, but as is often the case, I couldn’t find the problem. After a few moments of frustration, I got excited when I remembered that I had purchased an extended warranty. The warranty would give me an opportunity to repair the problem at little or no cost—or so I thought. I searched and searched for my warranty contract and finally found it. Much to my disappointment, the warranty coverage period expired about one month ago. My temporary excitement turned quickly into dejection. It didn’t matter how good the warranty was at one time, it was worthless now. The promises and commitments made by the warranty company were now meaningless. I would be forced to suffer through the continuing laptop problems, or spend the money to purchase a new one.

One of the most frustrating things we go through sometimes as Christians is our prayer lives. While it is an awesome privilege we have to be able to lift up our prayers to the Lord, it often becomes frustrating when our prayers are not answered quickly enough or in the manner we think they should be answered. Many times, I would pray and pray and pray about a situation seemingly without an answer. In some cases, my prayers would go years without seemingly being answered. Other times, it seemed as if I received an answer, but the answer was totally different than what I was expecting.

In thinking back many years over my prayer life, I learned the hard way that delays in receiving an answer to prayer help us grow our faith in many ways. Here are 4 things I learned that may help you in your own prayer life: (1) Delays in receiving an answer may be for our own good. God has a perfect plan for each of us and sometimes delays may be to provide us with more experience or preparation in a particular area of our life; (2) Delays may be for the benefit of others. In God’s infinite wisdom, our lives are often inter-woven with the lives of others. Only God knows the perfect time to answer our prayer to not only impact our life, but also the life of someone else; (3) Delays in receiving an answer may be to move you in a particular direction. Sometimes in my life, a delay was God’s way of telling me to change directions. Withholding what I was expecting as an answer forced me to make a change which was what God wanted all along; (4) A delay in receiving an answer to prayer may actually be a “no” from God that we refuse to accept. I can remember one particular case where if I had received the answer I originally wanted, the result would have been disastrous. Unfortunately, I was too stubborn at the time to accept the “no” that God was telling me.

God always answers our prayers and those prayers have no expiration date. Be patient, and watch how God works in your life.

Avoiding the Shortcut To Trouble

Encouragement

I loved the neighborhood our family lived in during my Elementary School years. Now, granted, this was in the 1960’s and times have changed, but it was a wonderful time and place. All the neighborhood kids knew each other; even the parents knew each other. We couldn’t get into too much trouble because other parents would call my parents and—well—–the rest was history as they say. Times have certainly changed. Most of us don’t even know our neighbor’s names today.

We would stay outside and play from sun-up to sun-down. It was football, then basketball, then we would “play army,” then we might ride our bikes complete with baseball cards clipped to the spokes so we would sound like motorcycles. No video games for us. We had to entertain ourselves and didn’t ever seem to have any difficulty doing so.

One of the things my friends and I loved to do was walk from my house to a Shopping Center that was behind our neighborhood. Occasionally, we got our hands on a shiny new Quarter or sometimes a Dime and you would have thought we had a million dollars. At that time, a Dime or Quarter would buy a week’s supply of Pixie Stix or Hubba Bubba or Milk Duds, or maybe a Nutty Buddy or Eskimo Pie. No one during those times had any reservations about letting a group of kids walk alone up to this Shopping Center for our shopping spree.

It was a fairly long walk from our house to the Shopping Center IF we walked the long way around on the major streets. We soon discovered that there was a narrow storm drainage ditch that ran between two houses in the neighborhood that miraculously opened up in the back of the Shopping Center. We would cut through this drainage ditch and be at the Shopping Center much quicker. All we had to do was walk around to the front of the buildings and we were there!! Suddenly, the “shortcut,” as we called it, was the greatest discovery since Lewis and Clark went West. You would have thought we had discovered Gold. Being able to get to the all important Shopping Center within a few short minutes, as opposed to taking 45 minutes, when we walked the long route, was life changing for Elementary School kids.

It wasn’t very long after our great discovery that we began realizing the “shortcut” may not have been as great of a discovery as we first thought. We began getting scratched by briers and cut by broken glass. We sometimes ran into stray animals and neighborhood “bullies” who hid in the bushes waiting for us. We tripped and fell. We soon became faced with a decision of whether we wanted to take our chances with the “shortcut,” not knowing what was lurking for us, just to save a few minutes, or go ahead and take the safer route, even though it was much longer. Most of us chose the longer, safer route. It just wasn’t worth the trouble.

Our Christian life is much the same way, or at least mine has been at times. I tried to take the shortcut with my prayer life and only began praying when I thought I needed prayer. I slowly realized that I couldn’t take a shortcut with my prayer life. I tried to read my Bible only occasionally, mostly on Sunday’s when the Pastor asked us to. I slowly realized that I needed God’s Word every day, not just once a week. I discovered that there are no shortcuts with God. He wants our all, ALL the time. When we take shortcuts with God, danger is only a short distance behind.

Is your Christian Life taking too many shortcuts? You can change that starting today.

Your Road Map for Loving Others

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