“Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,“–Heb. 12:1

In 1845, the ill-fated Franklin Expedition sailed from England to find a passage across the Arctic Ocean.

The crew loaded their two sailing ships with a lot of things they didn’t need: a 1,200-volume library, fine china, crystal goblets, and sterling silverware for each officer with his initials engraved on the handles. Amazingly, each ship took only a 12-day supply of coal for their auxiliary steam engines.

The ships became trapped in vast frozen plains of ice. After several months, Lord Franklin died. The men decided to trek to safety in small groups, but none of them survived.

One story is especially heartbreaking. Two officers pulled a large sled more than 65 miles across the treacherous ice. When rescuers found their bodies, they discovered that the sled was filled with table silver.

Those men contributed to their own demise by carrying what they didn’t need. But don’t we sometimes do the same? Don’t we drag baggage through life that we don’t need? Evil thoughts that hinder us. Bad habits that drag us down. Grudges that we won’t let go.-David C. Egner

Even when we are forced by evidence to admit that we aren’t content we come up with some explanation to excuse it. Is that not an evidence that we don’t really believe that “all things work together for good“? We accept the good but complain about the bad. But the command to be content doesn’t change with the circumstances. We are to be content regardless of our situation–good, bad, or ugly. Does that sound unreasonable to you? Probably so. It just doesn’t seem right that we are to be content when we’ve been wronged. Surely, we think, the wrong gives us the right to vent our frustration, so we allow ourselves to be controlled by our feelings.

Some times we are guilty of overlooking things that should be cause for great rejoicing. For example, someone inquires about how church was Sunday and we say, “The attendance was up, three were baptized and, O yeah one was saved”. We witness a soul being saved and then mention it with no more excitement than a comment about the weather. How can that be? How excited would you be if someone paid off all your debt and deposited a million dollars in your account? Or if your dearest loved one was healed of terminal cancer? Or, what if God raised your dearest loved one from the dead? Imagine that! Yet the salvation of a soul is an even greater miracle than any of those things. How can we not get excited about seeing someone born again?

Urging people to spend more time in prayer and Bible study seldom meets with success. They seem to think you are trying to torture them, or at least deprive them of better things. If you feel that way all I know to say is, “WOW! Someone has surely misled you”. That’s like saying a love letter from your sweetheart is boring. Are you kidding me? How can you not get excited about God speaking to you? Were His voice loud and audible would that make a difference? Why? Knowing it comes from our loving heavenly Father should be all that matters. Whether you understand it or not, He has chosen this as the means best suited for us.

When’s the last time you thought about the words, “Confirm thy soul in self-control”? We often sing or hear the song without giving any serious thought as to what it is saying. We love to talk about freedom and liberty, but not so much about “self-control“. Self-government is great, but it works only for a virtuous  people. Our forefathers were emphatic about that. However when we are out of control, unable to govern ourselves, we are unable to elect the kind of people needed to rightly govern our nation. Our country is in this present mess, not because of any one leader or party, but because of the selfish, out of control populace that empowers them. And, if we look deep enough, I suspect we all can see that we are contributors to the problem. We cannot condone in ourselves what we condemn in others and expect anything to change for the better. As Christians we should know better.