09/22/08

Good Monday Mornin’ everyone!

First of all just to give you an update on Beverly she can finally get on and off the couch by herself! So she is making progress. Please keep us in your prayers as we go to the doctor this Thursday and are looking for good news from him. I know that in the beginning I said to hold the calls to a minimum, but as she sets on the couch day after day calls and visits are a comfort to her. So if you would like to call her feel free.

We have a new puppy here at the house, she is an Australian Cattle dog and her name is Latigo. She is a cute as she can be and as rambunctious as she can be as well. It is pretty neat having a new puppy around the house because everything is new to her. She went outside the other day and played with a tall blade of grass for ten minutes as if she had never seen anything like that before in her life.

Australian Cattle dogs are also known as Blue Heelers, because they bite at the heels of cattle, or anything else, and keep them herded together. Lati (short for Latigo) met the horses for the first time the other day. Now all the other dogs around the house could care less about the horses and even run from them, but not Lati, she was fascinated and ran up to check them out. She would get down and bark at them and then she would run up and get right at their faces and smell them. Then the other morning she heard a cow and her head came up and she was very interested in what that noise was. It is so amazing because these things, these instincts are in her. I did not put them there, she did not ask for them; but by the very way that God made her she has an instinct to herd livestock. Now sure we will have to cultivate that instinct so that we can get the most out of her, but it is there. You can’t teach it, you can’t buy it and you can’t make another dog do it; God has given her the natural desire to work with livestock.

As a sat on my back porch the other morning and watched the sun come up with Lati in my lap, God began to unfold something similar in me that is in Lati. Not to herd cattle, although I do love doing that, but an instinct that is in me that I cannot explain; a driving desire to know God.

Genesis 1:27 says, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” We were created in the image of God, or in the likeness of God. Perfect, no death, live forever, peaceful, content, joyful and full of love. We were created in the beginning to be just like God in all His attributes. Now we were not created to be God, but to be like God. There is a huge difference. But then things go wrong and because Adam and Eve thought there might be more for them to know they left this perfect union with God and forever separated mankind from their Creator.

Now for thousands of years man has tried to get back to their Creator. We use all different means to do this. Fishing, hunting, golf, sex, drugs, alcohol, compulsive buying, gambling and religion are just a few things that man seems to want to use to try and fill this void that has been left there where God used to be. You see it is in our instinct to want happiness it is in our makeup. However, there is only one way to find it.

I believe that just like Lati has a desire to herd cattle, so it is instilled in each member of humanity a desire to find God. We all have it in us. I liken it to a bullet. There is gun powder in the bullet, there is a firing pen, there is the bullet itself that will do the damage, but unless that shell is put into the gun and the firing pin activates the gun powder nothing will happen. Each one of us has the making in us for God to live in us, we just have to let the Firing Pin of the Holy Sprit activate in us His power to set us into a relationship with Him.

2 Corinthians 5:1-5 says, “Now we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we will have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For whiled we are in the tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed with our heavenly  dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now it is God who has made us for this very purpose and has given us the Sprit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”

That is a lot said, but the overlying thought is, we are only here for a while, God has a better place for us to be, we will have suffering in the mean time, but the Spirit of God has given us a guarantee that we will one day be there. How comforting it is to know that God Himself has made a way for me to be in Him! That He thought enough of me to make a way to Him! I don’t deserve it, you don’t deserve it, but He gives it to us anyway.

Okay so what is your part in all of this? Just like I said about Lati the instinct is there, but you have to cultivate your desire for God and when you do, it will get greater and greater. Paul wrote to Timothy, “fan into flame the gift of God. . . “ Paul says, “Timothy you have a spark, now fan it into a flame.” Prayer, Bible reading, meditation, fasting, coming to church and many other Spiritual disciplines are not meant to be legalistic rituals, they are tools but which you fan your spark.

Every morning I try to have the “Hour of Power” I know that is cheesy but it rhymes. In this hour I want to talk to God, read about God, listen to God or sometimes just sit completely still in His presence. But one thing I have found for sure if I do not stop and do something I regress in my walk with Christ.

So what I want to encourage you all to do today is to fan into flame your walk with Jesus. Grow in Him, become more like Him and you will find that you are more satisfied in life than you have ever been before.

I love you all! Have a great week.

Pastor Jason Lyle 
The Open Range Church of Henry County 
Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails.