Trouble

Scripture

The LORD God who rules over all…says, “Why do you want to bring all this trouble on yourselves?

Jeremiah 44:7, NIRV

Quote

Life is like a garden with snakes and weeds; there is bound to be trouble but don’t make it worse by sowing bad seeds.

~Ya’akov

Everyone has problems. It is all but impossible to get through this life without some bumps and bruises. Yet so many times we complicate things by our disobedience, by our refusing to follow God’s explicit instructions. The Jews came to Jeremiah, “Please pray for us,” they pleaded, “pray that God will show us what to do and where to go.” Jeremiah assured them that he would intercede in their behalf and for the next ten days he prayed, then the LORD told him exactly what to say to the Jews, “Do not go to Egypt.” Jeremiah told them– going to Egypt would make bad matters worse– in Egypt, they would die of hunger, plague and war. They got angry with Jeremiah and said, “You are lying. The LORD has not spoken to you, He did not tell you to say, ‘don’t go to Egypt.'” So these pig-headed Jews packed their bags and headed for Egypt and they died there from hunger, plague and war just like Jeremiah warned.

Here is my point. In Judah, where God told them to stay, they had some problems that they were going to have to deal with but by rebelling against God and His clear instructions, they multiplied their problems, they made everything worse, much worse. Cancer strikes the good as well as the evil. I have had a dozen friends die from cancer and they were all better men than myself. We can’t prevent all forms of cancer no matter what we do; we can’t prevent all strokes no matter what we do–these things happen to good people. We can however, make bad matters worse by refusing to live has God intends us to live. He did not put us here to amass wealth for ourselves or our children. We are to use our resources to advance the kingdom of Christ and to help others. When we hoard and bury the Masters resources in the ground, no one profits. In so doing, we have violated a cardinal rule in stewardship–we have taken God’s resources out of circulation so they no one can be helped by them. Nothing is the word of God teaches us to hoard resources that we or others could profit from.

This greed, this hoarding of resources is a disease and it may be worse than cancer. The extremes men go to in order to hoard the wealth entrusted to them by God amazes me. When there are obvious needs being neglected for the sake of holding on to our money, it is both sick and disturbing. Read this line carefully: It is not your money, it belongs to someone else and He will not allow you to keep it. He will allow you to use it, spend it, or give it away but He will not allow you to keep it. Keeping is not an option. So ignore my advice and get all you can, can all you get and sit on the lid so no one else can get it and become a miserable miser. Just remember this: You did it to yourself. Greed is a disease of choice. No one makes you choose it.


Well, I can’t complain about the weather. It has been a perfect year for a garden and I have been my own worse enemy. First, I sprayed my yard with MSMA and it killed everything except bad grass and weeds. He got my tomatoes and something is getting my rose bushes. Then just a few days ago, I poised the squash and killed every single one. I used a common insecticide but I put it in my Miracle Grow sprayer. I have never used a herbicide in this sprayer but the Miracle Grow and the malathion must create some kind of chemical reaction. My squash is deader than Fred.

Plus, my roundup ready corn doesn’t like roundup. I think it will survive but it burned it a bit and the grass is still present.

One bit of good news. I read in Ripkins book, chapter 27, that as of 1998 [20 years ago], there were an estimated 100,000,000 Christians in China. A couple of the House Churches have 10 million members. Christianity thrived under communism. We had a ton of Missionaries there in the early 1900’s and many of them returned home wondering if their time there was well spent. Lottie Moon, Bill Wallace, Hudson Taylor and Mrs. Bertha Smith are rejoicing over what is happening in China. What a harvest of souls and they planted the seeds.

I think we will be going to Cordova, Alabama today. I think it will be my first visit to this fair city.

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