Happy Friday!
Yesterdays blog: 31 Random Facts About the Chuckster was so much fun! Thanks for making it great with your HILARIOUS random facts!
Todays… a clip from Make Me A Legend chapter 6: Hurry Up & Find Rock Bottom!
hovering over rock bottom in the pigs pen
Isn’t it weird to think about how much God loves us, and how we spend so much of our lives running and hiding from him? Why do we muscle through our days in human strength, only turning to God when we have nowhere else to turn? Aren’t we out of our minds for making him our last resort? Why are we like this?
We live in a time when anyone claiming a close relationship with God is shunned as a religious fanatic. This modern world makes it seem like only ‘Christian extremists’ or ‘Jesus Freaks’ actually use the Bible as their guiding light. We want God to leave us alone, so we can live how we see best, without having responsibility to some ‘Heavenly Father’. Take a look at this beautiful story Jesus used for describing this insanity…
To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now, instead of waiting until you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and took a trip to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money on wild living.
About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him to feed his pigs. The boy became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. (Tough love) When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired men have food enough to spare, and here I am, dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired man.” –Luke 15:11-19
Can you see why this message was, and still is such a smash hit for Jesus? Millions of earthlings, who have never heard about Jesus, have heard his story about the Prodigal Son! I think it’s so popular because every one of us has served time in the pig’s pen. Haven’t we?
Not everyone in the mud, is perceptibly trudging around in some extreme state of human deprivation. There’s a vast sea of prodigals, who seem to have their lives all together… living in nice homes, driving nice cars, with nice careers! While the real truth is… they’re shattered and empty inside! Because nothing satisfies when the connection with Father is disrupted.
God forbid you’re even up to your neck in the slop right now, reduced down to a fraction of the amazing person you once were, gasping for your life under the unbearable weight of some great big series of wrong turns. It can happen so fast!
Every day, my heart aches so badly as I run into people worn down with hard life in the pig’s pen. Anyone that knows one of these pig dwellers almost wonders if they’re going to die right there in the mud! Some of them have spent so much time in the mud they oink at their own reflection! Their humanity has been leeched away… their identity is gone. In a maze of misery, these history maker hopefuls drift further and further into the wastelands, with very little hope of escape.
If I’m describing your scenario with startling prophetic accuracy, then please, with everything you have left, dig your frail fingernails deep into the cover of my book and hold on for dear life… I’m here to carry you out into safety!
Let’s dedicate some time praying today, for all the prodigal people we know! Look around! Things are not usually as they seem. Some of the worlds most hopeless people hide it sooo well.
Dream Big, Live Bold, and Make the Difference!
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