The Main Thing

Scripture

Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and he will give you everything you need.

~Luke 12:31, NLT

Quote

The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.

~Ike Reighard

When you boil it all down, life consist in what you love most. There is something in your life that you love more than anything else. Jesus summed up the Torah with one command: love God with all your heart, soul and mind. This should be our greatest passion and the second commandment, which depends totally on the first, is to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves. The devil is the master of deceit. He is the con artist of all con artist. He is also a pragmatist: he does not care what works as long as it works. It takes different things for different people. He used pleasure to seduce Esau, discouragement to cool the zeal of Elijah, jealously and envy to side track Saul and beautiful women to derail David. He doesn’t really care which tool he uses so long as he gets our focus off the main thing. If he can get us to love something more than we love Jesus, he has succeeded. If he can get us to love ‘things’ more than people, he has succeeded.

Our Sunday school lesson this past week was on Jesus restoring Peter. Peter had lost his confidence and you cannot lead without confidence. Jesus needed Peter to be a leader so He gently restored Peter and got him back on track. I have heard preachers say that Peter backslide and was going back to his old life but I don’t believe that is true. The devil had used Peter’s failure to discourage him. Peter felt like anything but a leader. This does bring up an interesting point: was Peter in the wrong for going fishing? Jesus did not rebuke Peter for fishing; matter of fact, Jesus helped Peter in his fishing expedition. Peter would have caught no fish had it not been for Jesus. There was nothing wrong with Peter fishing: recreation is vital to believers. We need retreats and revivals. We need to withdraw from the crowds, from the hustle and bustle of life, and engage ourselves is something that frees the mind. But we can’t allow recreation, sports, TV, etc. to become our focus. We must keep the main thing the main thing. Fanaticism occurs when we make something other than Jesus our cause.

Extra

Good to be back on line and into my routine. Mrs. Edith has been having good days, bad days and I think it might be related to medication but I don’t know for sure. Holly and June were there yesterday and she was in bed and out of it but Sunday when I was there, she was like her old self. I think the pain medication knocks her for a loop. Mrs. Willowdean is not doing well either. I really don’t know what the problem is but she doesn’t feel good and she has been staying in her room which is not Willowdean. She is not eating for one thing. Pray for both of these ladies.

The Point had three people at the Memorial Day service yesterday: Brandon Ohms, Josh Melson and myself. DBC had three and Gandy’s Cove had two. The six mothers who lost sons were honored and this is a good thing. I think they get Veterans Day and Memorial Day confused but at least they did something. I got to meet Jon Erik Loney’s mom.  It was an answer to prayer for me. I have been trying to locate her for years and she lived just two miles from the cemetery where is body was buried. Next year, LORD willing, I am going to do something for all six mothers. I need someone to remind me to start saving money in April.

After the Memorial Service, I worked at Holly’s putting in a drainage system and then late in the evening we had a tree falling ceremony. She had an old dead oak about 50-60 feet tall. Seth threw a cord over one of the limbs and Troy brought us two hundred feet of rope and one pulled the most dangerous limb off, then Seth cut it down with a chain saw. It was a tense moment. It did not fall where we intended and I hollowed for him to leave the saw and run which thankfully he did. I figured the saw would be totaled but I couldn’t have cared less, I didn’t want to lose a grandson. He went back and picked the saw up and it was still running. You can’t beat a Willard chain saw.

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