Christian Living

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God’s Opportunities! Larry Lilly
“Behold, I have set before thee an open door”…Rev. 3:8
In preparation for the New Year, both along the lines of sermons to help the people and yours truly, I came across a statement from a man I had forgotten about. I never knew him personally, but I have read about him over the years. His name was Frank Laubach. Frank had served as a missionary for many years, and during this service in Christ’s name realized that it is easier to reach people who can read than to reach totally illiterate men and women. Thus, he began a program which during his lifetime resulted in sixty million people learning to read. In my lifetime I have taught ten people to read, all of them men in prison who could not read even the simplest sentence.
During a period in his life Mr. Laubach determined that he would fill every minute full with the thought of God. Of course he failed, but he sure got closer to the Lord than ever before. In a daily note on January 3, 1930 Frank wrote:
“To be able to look backward and say, ‘This, this has been the finest year of my life,’ that is glorious! But anticipation! To be able to look ahead and say, ‘The present year can and will be better!’ That is more glorious! I have done nothing but open windows, God has done the rest. There has been a succession of marvelous experiences of the friendship of God. I resolved that I would succeed better this year of filling every minute with the thought of God than I succeeded last year. And I added another resolve, to be as wide open toward people and their need as I am toward God. Windows open outward as well as upward. Windows open especially downward where people need the most!”
I don’t know much about Mr. Laubach other than that he loved God and cared about people. I have trouble doing both of these noble things. Oh, I have all of the right words, even a multitude of verses. I have even written sermons on both subjects. The trouble is, knowing the scriptures I also know it is silly to pretend to love God and find so many moments when I don’t give a hoot about ‘un-nice’ people. I really love people who are no problem. It’s the other kind that really get under my skin. I wouldn’t mind this so much were it not for the biblical truth that the ‘un-nice’ are the acid test of my real love for God. I am supposed to love these miserable wretches with the kind of love God has for me. It reads well and seems simple until you try it, and then…
Many of my friends complain of the complexities of the Bible. I wish this measure of love was more complex, then I would have a better excuse for not really caring about the unlovely. When I lapse into this uncaring mode, it really bugs me that, in my 45th year of being a born again child of God through faith in Jesus Christ, I am clearly confronted with the true state of my spiritual life. You would think that years of walking with Jesus, of learning a few different languages of the ancient world, of preaching sermons, which according to Mom are near angelic, would make up for my trouble, my failure to even like, let alone love in the Agape mode, the ‘un-nice.’ Yet Paul the Apostle states and that as the Holy Spirit carried him along, that if I preach with the tongue of angels, that if I give my body on the fiery stake, and do not have love, I am nothing. I able to find precious little comfort in the thought, “Oh, well Paul was a fanatic.” I almost pulled this off, but then I was hit right in the face with the words of Jesus, “This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.” John 15:12. This statement from Jesus means that I am to love goofy people the same way He loves them. John chimes in with, “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?” 1John 4:20
John is so precise!
As I reread the above verses along with the entire epistle of 1st John, I realized just how big a deal ‘filling each minute full of God’ really is, especially when confronted with the truth that God identifies with unlovely people with all of their needs.
If my life will be a little of heaven in 2007, I must have the same heart for those souls who are seen only through the ‘window opened downward’ as does Christ.
I already know the difference between praying for ‘a hungry world’ and actually inviting a truly hungry person to my table, in my home. Praying for a hungry world is an abstract prayer, inviting a homeless person in is a particular act of love, especially if I keep it to myself!
As I make my ‘New Years’ resolutions for 2007, I must come to grips with several things about my life. On the list that most people make, you know the one, “I will quit drinking, cussing, gambling, running with wild women etc,” I have had those under control for 45 years, through Jesus Christ. I am hoping to be able say someday that I am a recovering workaholic. I am too busy to put that on the list this year. I haven’t set a goal to reach more than ever before, not that I don’t want to do that, but I know that as I give it my best shot, some will be reached. I don’t have a wall full of pictures of things I simply must have, so that I may gaze upon them, name them and claim them, for the glory of Jesus. I just somehow take the Lord at His word and trust Him to give me the necessary things.
My list of New Years resolutions is to someway, somehow figure out the ‘how’ of really getting closer to the Lord, to as Frank Laubach wanted, fill each minute full of God, to reach the place where each person, who in someway is visible through the window opened downward, is recognized as precious to me as he is to Jesus Christ. Then and only then will my living not be in vain.
For many years I have been comforted by the words of Minnie Louise Haskins as quoted by King Edward in his Christmas address to the British people in the dark days of 1939:
The Man At The Gate
I said to the man
Who stood at the gate of the year,
“Give me a light that I may tread safely
into the unknown.”
And he replied,
“Go out into the darkness
and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you
Better than the light
And safer than a known way!”
So I went forth
And finding the hand of God
Trod gladly into the light.”
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As we face the vast unknowns of 2007, we do so knowing the He, Jesus Christ, will take us by the hand and lead us, not necessarily up the mountain of our fondest dreams, but certainly His hand will guide us into a closer walk with Him. If we are in tune with Him, this closer walk will be enough.
Whether you read this message from a mansion, or a lonely prison cell on Death Row, you must realize that the closer walk with Jesus is more important than the place where you read about it, and hopefully decide to pursue a clearer walk, a dearer walk, through a nearer walk with him. LML.
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“The ideal life is in our blood and never will be still. Sad will be the day for any man when he becomes contented with the thoughts he is thinking and deeds he is doing, where there is not forever beating at the doors of his soul some great desire to do something larger, which he knows that he was meant and made to do.”
Phillips Brooks
“Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead.”
Louisa May Alcott

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