Powerful and Effective

Read James 1-4

Here’s your Christian attitude for trials of all kinds:  God is with me in this.  My part is to be faithful to him.  He will bring me to grow in his grace.  

Because of this Christian maturity that is in store for me, I will be joyful.  I will be joyful even in my trials.

Ask God.  Don’t doubt.  Don’t be like a wave tossed about the sea.

Be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry.  Human anger doe not improve our discipleship.

Don’t play favorites.  God’s love is for all.  The judgment seat is taken.

The only person honored and revered in our worship service is God.

Live by the Royal Law, the law of love, the law rooted in loving God and loving one another.  It’s not I’m not very good at obeying the commandments, so I think I will dabble in the law of love.  Be governed by this law.  Be passionate about living in response to God’s grace by living a life governed by love.

There will be evidence of our faith.

Faith without works is dead.  Good works—deeds which God planned before you were born—are the evidence of our faith.

Faith and works work together.

The tongue can be the spark that starts a forest fire or the rudder that turns the ship off course. 

A salt spring doesn’t produce fresh water.  A grapevine doesn’t produce figs.  The words of the believer do not blaspheme God and praise him at the same time.  If there is any doubt, it should be only the latter.  Our voices were designed to praise God.

Biter envy and selfish ambition are indicators that we are living by the wisdom of the world instead of the wisdom of God.

The wisdom of God is pure, peace loving considerate, submissive, full of mercy, producing good fruit, impartial and sincere.

Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness.

It’s less about the devil made me do it and more about wrestling with our own sinful nature.

You can’t be a friend of the world and a friend of God at the same time.  Christ died for us while we were his enemies.  Let’s stick with being a friend of God.

Don’t expect God to grant your petitions if they are from the wrong motive.

God opposes the proud and gives grace to the humble.

Submit yourselves to God, resist the devil and he will flee.

Humble yourself before God and be ferocious before your enemies.

Stop being double-minded. When you sin, you need to check that it’s no problem because grace will abound even more attitude, and put on the sackcloth and ashes mindset until you have confessed. 

Remember that repentance is a complete turnaround.  We leave behind the old mind, the old ways, the old life and completely exchange it for the new.  In this case, we are to live as Christ’s disciple.

When we judge one another, we are putting ourselves in the Seat of Moses and desiring to make the law conform to us.  We are taking on a role reserved for Christ.  We are not focusing on our discipleship.

When we condemn our neighbor, we are trying to put Jesus out of a job as the only one who can rightfully judge our sins.  Remember the first part of the Great Commission:  All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.

Jesus didn’t opt for early retirement.  There is no job opening.

Planning is good.  It is very educational and good in the practice of stewardship.  Just don’t get married to your plan.  God tells us that he has good plans for us.

Do the best you can as you plan what you will—your plans will be more and more pleasing to God the closer that you draw to him.  But take the best plan that you have and put it at the feet of Jesus.  Put it at the feet of Jesus. 

Thy will be done!

Plan away but know that the Lord directs our steps.  We know it’s the Lord’s will for us to love him and love each other.  We don’t have to ask the Lord if that is his will.  He already told us that it was.

We should include in our plans in our daily dialogue with the Almighty, asking if our plan is in step with and pleasing to the Lord.

If you must boast, boast in the Lord not in your plan.

We are on this earth for such a short time.  We are but a mist.  Consider the psalmist’s counsel to learn to number our days.

Let’s talk sin.  If you know what to do and don’t do it, that’s your sin.

So, here’s a nugget to put in your plans.  Do the good that God planned for us before we were born.  The Royal Law—the law not only of love but freedom—liberates us to live as God designed us to live.

Bubble buster:  You are rich.  Get over it.  It’s for real.  You who are listening today, you are rich.  Go take the interrogative series I put together for the first part of this chapter.

You are rich!

But does our wealth get in our way and is it used against others?  Do we leverage blessings to help others or to manipulate them?

That’s our flyover of James at 30,000 feet.  I hope that your personal study and your classes got down to tree top level.  Perhaps you found a landing zone and got down in the weeds for some of this.

Do you see how some frame James as the Proverbs of the New Testament? 

Now, let’s finish the chapter and the book.

Read James 5

We have been told that we are only on this earth for a short time.  We are but a mist, but sometimes it feels like a long time.  We do not yet fully understand the eternal perspective.  So, what do we do?

Be patient.  Take note of the farmer who does not plant on Monday and harvest on Friday.  The farmer knows patience.

If you go a few pages past the end of James, Peter gives us these words:

The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

James says, his is coming is near.  We don’t know the day or the hour but it’s the next big thing on God’s cosmic calendar. 

That’s cool.  We don’t know when but we should be ready now.  Anything else?

Stand firm in your faith and quit grumbling and picking at each other.  That’s not what you want to be doing when the Lord comes again, and he is coming again.

Consider the prophets.  Consider how Job persevered in the face of suffering.  He did not lose his faith and you know what the Lord brought about for him.

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy.  Keeping the faith is worth it.!

We need to talk about swearing.  I’m not talking profanity, but the kind that says, “I’ll swear on a stack of Bibles.”  Does the number of Bibles in the stack increase the veracity of you statement?  Must all Bibles of the same translation or does some variety help?

“I swear on my grandmother’s grave.”  For the person with a Christian grandmother, that might seem like a powerful statement, except she’s not there.  You are swearing on a chunk of ground with a headstone.  OBTW—what do people say if their grandmother was cremated her ashes scattered?

Well, how do I get my point across that what I am saying is the truth?

Always speak the truth.  Answer yes when you should answer yes.  Say no when you should say no.  Watch out for caveats and exceptions.  Think before you speak.

Sometimes that is difficult.  Here’s some counsel.

My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry, because human anger does not produce the righteousness that God desires.

Let people know what you say is trustworthy because that’s the way that you live.  This whole faith being manifested in our deeds rings true with our speech.

Let your yes be yes and your no be no.  Don’t try this in geometry where sometimes the answer is y=mx+b.

Now we come to confession and prayer.  Which brings us to prayer in school.  So long as there is testing in school, there is prayer in school.  Perhaps there is more prayer in the homeschooling approach these days.

OK, that one is not from James, but if are in need, in trouble, or just struggling, then pray.  We are doing our best to consider all of our trials with joy, but we are not called to do it alone.  Pray.

If things are great, sing to your Father in heaven thanksgiving and praise.

If you are sick and need more than your own prayers, get put on the prayer list, or better yet, call for the elders of the church to pray for you.

Prayer is the vehicle to healing and forgiveness.  Pray all the time.  Keep the conversation going.  Listen more than you speak.  Believe in the power of prayer.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Great!  I have to be righteous for my prayer to count.  Great.  I’ll never get there.  Hey, I’m not Elijah.

That’s true if you think you can get there on your own.  Even David when he sinned with Bathsheba, knew that if endless bulls and goats were sacrificed, it would not make him right with God.

But the blood of Jesus made you right with God.  You have been made right with God

We are still called to live up to the standing that God gave us, but you have standing to come before the Throne of Grace with confidence and ask God for what you need.

The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

Believe it or not, no just believe it, that’s you!

Pray!  Pray for others.  Ask others to pray for you.  Prayers are powerful and effective.  For the one made right in the blood of Jesus, our prayers are powerful and effective.

God is all knowing.  He knows what comes next and he also wants to walk with us in prayer as we live moment-to-moment in faith.  Pray!

Faith without works is dead, but understand our prayers are evidence of our faith.  Hopefully they are not the only evidence, but our prayers are convincing evidence of our faith.

Here’s something that we don’t do much of these days:  Confess our sins to one another.  We need accountability partners.  We need a real friend that can speak the truth in love to us and us to them.  We need to be that kind of friend to a few others.

Let’s consider the coupling here:

Therefore, confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

And now we come to the end of the chapter and the book and James tells us to Connect the disconnected.

OK, he didn’t use those words but if there are those who are not drawing closer to God and enjoying God grow closer to them, then go bring them home.  Home does not have to be inside the church building.  The first century church spent a lot of time in gathering in homes of believers. 

Connect the disconnected is still possible in this age of social distancing.

If there are those running away from God, bring them home.  There are blessings in connecting the disconnected.

March is the month of the Bible.  Our classes and sermons have come to an end, but March has two more days.  If this journey through James was more than the flavor of the month to you, then meditate upon the words you read, the words you heard proclaimed, and the discussion that ensued for these past weeks. 

Dedicate the last two days of March.  Make comments, add more questions, put your evaluation on the Book of James Facebook page.

I pray that this month was pleasing to God and produced good fruit for you.  If you think that something like this bears repeating, talk to one or more of your elders currently serving on the session.

Amen.

Rich Oppressors, who me?

Read James 5

Everyone here can take a breath for the next section.  It’s just talking to rich people.  Is anyone rich?  No, we’re just regular people.  No rich folks here.

On your personal Facebook page, post Marked safe from James 5:1-6.

I’m not rich.  Who is rich?  Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Warren Buffett, those people are rich.  I’m not Warren Buffet rich.  I’m not even Jimmy Buffet rich.

We’ve got a billionaire president and another billionaire who wanted to be, but I’m nowhere near having that kind of money.  I’m just not rich.

Let’s put it this way.  Do you:

·       Live indoors

·       Have heat or air conditioning or both

·       Own a car or have access to a car

·       Have more than one set of clothes

·       Eat every day

·       Have clean water available to you every day

·       The water comes into your house via plumbing

·       You have a phone

·       You have a smartphone

·       You have television

·       Your bathroom is in the house

·       Your culinary decisions are where not if we are going to eat

·       You go hunting because you like to not because you will starve if you don’t

·       You have a device that plays music

·       You don’t worry about your town being pillaged

·       You have attended a play or show or concert

·       You tithe

·       You made extra offerings to help the Children’s Home of our Local Benevolence Fund

·       You had something more to give to Martha, the Goat and 2 Chickens, VBS, F4, or camp

·       You have a storage room or building that would outfit another entire family or two

·       You think that diet means to lose weight instead of meaning whatever you can come up with to eat.  If you went to college, that time period doesn’t count.  Four-day old pizza is a legit diet

·       You have access to college or trade schools

·       You pay another person to cut your hair or your nails

·       You have posted online

·       You complain because you had to wait 10 minutes to get your fast food

·       You purchased a suit or dress for a special occasion

·       You have a bank account with at least enough money to keep it open

·       You had money for the book fair at school

·       You have a job or other source of income

·       You know what MSI stands for

·       You have said the words: What are we doing for fun tonight?

·       You have a microwave oven

·       You were able to give your kids and grandkids very nice gifts

·       You are still trying to figure out MSI.  OK, it’s Multiple Streams of Income

·       You may worship where you want without fear of persecution.  You might be doing it in isolation but you are not persecuted.

Now let’s see where you stand as far as being rich.

If you said yes to fewer that 5 of these, you likely live in poverty and probably outside of this country.  If you said yes to more than 5 but fewer than 10, you are better off than half the world regardless of where you live.

If you answered yes to more than 10, you are rich.  You are rich.  You are rich.

OBTW—did I mention that you are rich.

You should realize just how blessed you are.  Before you get too excited, realize that you also lost your exemption to the counsel in the first part of chapter 5.  Yep!  James is talking to you.

And as you read his words they should bring to mind the words of Jesus.

Do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where moth and rust destroy and thieves break in an steal.  Instead, store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and thieves do not break in and steal.

For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

James is admonishing the rich among them who have hoarded their riches for themselves.  He is saying that the very things by which you measure your wealth and comfort have corroded. Your worth is worthless!

Your corroded wealth testifies against you.

Part of this warning is if you use your wealth to manipulate others.  That is, you slow pay your helpers.  Why?  Because you can.  What are they going to do?  You are the person of influence and they can’t pressure you.

We hear the word oppressor than automatically think, Well that can’t be me.

But what if it is?

We might think of oppressors as plantation owners, communist governments, sweatshop owners who pay pennies to make a $100 pair of shoes, but not us.

Those are extreme examples, just as Warren Buffet is an extreme example of being rich.

But what if our riches are corrupting us?  What if, let’s put this in familiar context, we are not putting our Master’s money to work right away.

What if our comfort level has blinded us to the need around us?

What if our When I get around to it attitude is corrupting what we have?

We have been here before.  Money is not evil; in fact it is not the root of all evil.  The love of money is not even the root of all evil. The love of money is a big player in sourcing evil.

The love of money is the root of all sorts of evil.

Our money and our stuff and anything else that contributes to our wealth is not the problem.  Those things do not have a life of their own.  They have no free will.  The fact that we store up treasure here on earth and those treasures  become infested or corrupt is the problem.

Sometimes we don’t see the problem.  Oh that junk?

If it’s junk, why have you not discarded it?  Well, it might have some usefulness.

Then why don’t you give it to someone who will use it?

Some of you here consider me a pain in the neck because as I walk around the church building during the week, I find items that are just stuck in a room or in a corner of a room or behind a sofa and I take them and put them on a table in the fellowship hall.  I am asking for one of three things:

·       Claim it and take it home

·       Discard it

·       Give it away

There may be other options but accumulating stuff is repugnant to me in an organization that should be committed to putting what we have to work at once.

I know there are always exceptions but we must be on guard that the exceptions don’t become the rule.

I moderate the session.  Sometimes I offer new ideas.  Sometimes I will put a draft out there to start a discussion and hope that that discussion leads to something fruitful.  I try not to use any power of persuasion.  I want people to be led by God’s Spirit.  I ask the session to spend a lot of time in prayer.

I did put out the year of the Bible and it was met with an underwhelming response, but the idea was not dead.  So, we took on this Month of the Bible – The Study of James as a trial method.  I did not want to do it unless I had significant buy-in from the congregation.  This sort of thing will just be the flavor of the month if people are not reading daily and discussing profusely.

I’m telling you this not just to remind you to read daily, discuss frequently, and come full of thoughts and questions for class and worship.  I’m bringing up session meetings to let you know one time my skin was about ready to crawl off of me.

We have a space challenge in this building. Think about that.  A church in Spaceport Oklahoma has a space problem.   Sometimes it has to do with people and sometimes stuff and then sometimes we have all the space we need.  It is a challenge that comes with the blessing of acquiring this building 15 years ago. 

But one Sunday evening as the session was discussing this issue that is an on again/off again issue, someone said we could just get a Conex box.  It’s a metal box like you seek on the back of trains and sometimes trucks that usually max out at about 40 feet in length.

Right away people started looking at the cost and availability on their phones.  That’s when my skin started crawling.  It’s not that it would have been an eye-sore.  We could have stuck it on the east side of the building across the right-of-way.  Unless you lived in the trailer park, you would never even notice it.

The session asked me for my thoughts, and I said I didn’t want something to accumulate stuff and if we did this it would need a manager—someone to make sure it wasn’t a new and improved junk room.

Why was I such a stick in the mud?  Because I grew up fairly poor, that is rich by the world’s standards, and this is my experience.  I grew up in the United States of America.  See if you can relate.

We accumulate stuff.  It fills a closet.  Then it fills a garage.  Then we rent or buy or build a storage room.  Then we have room to accumulate more stuff.  Then one day we go to the room and to get something we would like to use and it’s way in the back and we just say, I’ll just go buy another one.

We hold on to stuff because one day we might use it.  Then the day comes and we use something else because we don’t want to sort through the stuff.

One day we may get a Conex box for our stuff.  I never argued against it, nor will I in the future.  I will simply include my counsel that we must guard against the accumulation of stuff and as such, we would need a Storage Manager.

Let me return briefly to money. We are called to be wise with our money, even in the worldly sense.  The proverb says that the wise man stores up an inheritance for his children’s children.

The coupling in the proverb is that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous.

Are we living in such a way that the wealth of those made right by the blood of Jesus is stored up for the wicked?  Is it stored up just to be consumed by corrosion or by vermin?

Once again, James is not the Lone Ranger in his instructions and challenges.  The master in the parable of the talents addressed the third servant as wicked and lazy. 

Wicked?  Really?  Yes.

We should consider that not to use our wealth for the benefit of the least of these our brothers and sisters is the same as being oppressive.  We had the means to help and did nothing.

What am I saying as I present this part of James to you?  Put out a BOLO—Be on the Lookout for opportunities to put our wealth to use for the glory of God and not just to feather our nest or increase our own prestige.

Are we rich?  Yes!

Are we oppressive?  There’s your food for thought for this week.

When we complete our study of the Book of James, take this question to Luke 12:13-21 and the Parable of the Rich Fool.  Then ask yourself this question:

Are you rich towards God?

You thought that you got the day off with this short pericope.  Well, it might just cause us to meditate upon what it says as much if not more than the rest of the counsel we find in this book.

Re-read the first six verses and then ask yourself this question. 

Am I rich towards God?

Amen.

Farmer's Patience

Read James 5

It takes 1 woman 9 months to have a baby, but a government study has concluded that 9 women could have 1 baby in only a month.  A 9-month term is too long to wait.  We don’t like to wait.

The kid at the fast-food counter apologized that I had to wait.  My wait was almost 45 seconds.  He stilled messed up my order, but did apologize that the messed-up order took so long.

When I think about waiting when I am dining out, I can’t help but think about what Yogi Berra had to say on the subject.  Nobody goes there anymore.  It’s too crowded.

You want to understand waiting in the modern world, think FTP.  That’s File Transfer Protocol.  Back in the day, if I needed some information, I had to have my computer dial up the computer that had the information via a telephone line, connect, do the online handshake thing—protocol sounds way more official—and then get the down load.

The 10- or 20-page document that takes 15-20 seconds to download now, took half an hour.  During that entire time, you hoped and prayed that you didn’t lose the connection.

I have waited at our one and only traffic light as the light cycled through a couple times and I am still sitting in the left turn lane on Sooner Road.  There has been no traffic at all for over 2 minutes but I’m stuck at the light.  I must decide to just run the light, get out of my car and wave my arms so the sensor that has been asleep knows I am there, or just wait patiently.  Most of the time that I am stuck at that light are not days in which I have practicing patience on my to do list.

If the people in front of you on the golf course are playing slowly, you want to play through.  It only makes sense.  Why should you have to wait?

After my stroke, the doctor recommended that I limit myself to one cup of coffee per day.  I complied with his instructions on one cup per day.  I have fully complied with one cup per day.  Right now, I am up to January 24^th, 2029.  Why should I have to wait for the day to arrive?

We don’t like to wait.  We will pay extra not to wait.  We will complain when we have to wait.  Sometimes we even throw a tantrum when we have to wait.

Do you know who learns to wait better than most?  The farmer.  Unless you are growing radishes, there is usually a significant amount of time between seedtime and harvest.

You just don’t see a farmer sowing wheat on Monday and firing up his combine on Friday.   This whole business of a seed producing a plant that produces something to harvest is incredible, but not instantaneous. 

The farmer without patience is a frustrated farmer.  The immediate gratification mindset of this age doesn’t go well with the principles of the farm.

So the farmer plants his seed and then can binge watch Netflix for the next few months, right?  Not exactly.  The farmer always has something to do between seedtime and harvest.

We need to understand that patience is not procrastination.  Just because the harvest is some time away, does not mean that there are not things that need to be done now.

These things don’t bring the harvest any closer but are essential nonetheless. 

This is the season of Advent.  We prepare ourselves to celebrate the birth of Christ Jesus.  We celebrate God with us.  We remember what we generally call the Christmas story.  We sing of a babe in a manger, shepherds watching their flocks, a silent night, a holy night, and we even ask Mary if she knew when she kissed her baby that she kissed the face of God.

We get that part.  We celebrate with joy knowing with certainty that 25 December isn’t the date on our Lord’s birth certificate, but it’s when we celebrate his birth into this world.  He was the King of Kings as birth but lived the life of the suffering servant.  We celebrate that salvation had come.

We also look forward to our Lord’s second advent—to his return in which he will claim all of his children.  He is coming for us.  We won’t be looking for him in a cave or a barn or some twig hut—in mean estate as the vision we have of the first coming.  He will come as he left—from heaven above.

And some days, we cry out Maranatha—come Lord Jesus, come.  I am so ready now to leave this world.  We want him to come to get us now.   We understand that when we say these words we had better be loving the Lord with everything we have.

But other days, perhaps we are not calling out for his immediate return.  On those other days, we find ourselves doing his work, loving our neighbors, proclaiming the grace and favor of the Lord, bringing our kids up in the way they should go.

We still look forward to the time when the Lord will come and claim us but we are not anxious.  We are patient.

For the Lord is not slow in coming.  He is patient with us.  His desire is that none perish. 

The Lord is patient with us.  James tells us to be patient as we wait uponthe Lord.  But just how can we be patient?

Today, I challenge you to be patient by being purposeful in every moment of your life. 

When you go to work, work as if you are working for the Lord and not for men.  It is the Lord, Christ whom we serve.

When you go into the world, be the salt of the earth.  Be the God seasoning of the planet.  Let others taste the goodness of the Lord.

Be the light of the world.  Let people see what you are doing—not for your own edification—but to bring glory to God.

Give your whole life to God as your offering, your sacrifice, your gift to him. 

Purpose your days and your hours.  Lord, teach us to number our days.  Let people see through us how precious this gift of life is.  Why would anyone want eternal life if they can’t see the value of every moment of life?

I have mentioned on many occasions that today’s world has gravitated to the twin gods of apathy and ambivalence.  People are living without purpose.

Sure, people get up and go to their jobs.  They pay their bills.  They even get their kids to school, sometimes they even get them there on time.

But, life, time, work seem like punishments or at best, necessary evils to those living without purpose.  We who live purposeful lives consider these resources, gifts, blessings.  Our lives, our time, our enterprises are blessings of purpose.

How can we patiently wait upon the Lord?  We do so by living a life of purpose.  Jesus said that people will know that we follow him by our love. 

Some fool themselves that they have not found their purpose in life.  The fact is that it is not and was never hidden.  Love God and love each other are surely at the heart of our purpose.  How we work these things out will vary, but we share these common purposes.

Loving God and loving others are purposes that are not hidden.  Let me get Presbyterian on you, and add one.  Let us enjoy God very much.

How can I wait upon the Lord?  How can I be patient while I wait? 

Love!

Number your days.

Live with purpose.

Enjoy your relationship with God so very much!

You know the saying that time flies when you are having fun.  It may be true but it’s not all-inclusive.

Time flies when you are living with purpose.

Time flies when you are living a life of love.

Time flies when you follow the leading of the Holy Spirit.

The tasks may be challenging.  The price paid may be high.  There may be some suffering involved but the wait itself is not debilitating. 

I used to dread a visit to the doctor or dentist.  It wasn’t the time with either that bothered me.  It was the time lost in the waiting room.  Well, I don’t mind those appointments so much anymore.

As I wait upon the doctor, I am writing a sermon, preparing a lesson, writing a book, listening to or counseling the person next to me, or sharing the gospel.  Time in the waiting room goes quickly.  I can wait patiently because my waiting time is purposed time.

But you think that all waiting can’t be purposeful.  Life happens.  Pain happens.  Suffering happens. 

James tells us that we are right.  Life happens.  Pain happens. Suffering happens.  Then he has the audacity to tell us to persevere and be blessed.  Perseverance without purpose is just stoicism.  James is telling us to continue in our purpose, to persevere in our purpose, to endure until the day of the Lord.  And while we are at it, be patient and know the Lord’s timing will be exactly right.

He has the boldness to say that waiting for the harvest is just the way it is supposed to be.  Look at the farmer.

James reminds us that the Lord is full of compassion and mercy.  We are not waiting and wondering.  We wait with anticipation of the good things that the Lord has promised.

Some of you can hardly wait to celebrate Christmas day.  Immediate gratification is our nature, but we are to be excited and patient at the same time as we wait on the coming of our Lord on a day announced only by his coming.

It sounds like something impossible—be excited and patient.  It’s not impossible.  Our hearts can cry out Come Lord Jesus and we can listen to the Spirit that lives within us and be patient as we wait for the Lord’s return.

You know what I couldn’t stand in school.  It still gets under my skin.  What was it?  Busywork.  Just doing something for the sake of filling the time.  We don’t fill the time!

Waiting on the Lord seems excruciating when we are just filling the time.  Waiting on the Lord’s return while we are living this life to the full, living purposefully, living lives of love is just being patient.  If we are enjoying our relationship with God in the course of serving him, time flies.

Maybe, there’s a little farmer in all of us.

Let’s look forward with excitement and anticipation to our Lord’s return.  Let’s be patient and purposeful while we wait.

Excitement and anticipation.

Patience and purpose.

We can wait upon the Lord.

Amen.