A DAY IN THE LIFE

A DAY IN THE LIFE

                Happy Thanksgiving everyone! I hope and pray that you have a wonderful filled with family and friends as well as love, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit. “Grace and peace to you through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

                My day started at 2:30 AM yesterday as it has been lately. I think my internal clock is still set to standard time, because I usually wake at 3:30, but , oh well, it gives me more time to spend with the Lord and we both do so much love mornings. There is something about the third watch that woke Jesus during His earthly sojourn as well.

                At any rate I spent my usual time in prayer and Bible study and wrote my morning article. Then I got on my keyboard and practiced the parts of the song that I would be playing on the recording and then packed up my gear around 9:30 AM and headed out to Abishai’s house in Petros, Tennessee to record the fifth song on my worship CD called “Our Eyes are on You.”

                After prayer for God’s anointing on this worship project, we laid down orchestra tracks and other parts and then added my voice. This song was particularly difficult vocally since I am older than when I first laid down the vocals and some of them are  very high, namely the backup parts. I am looking forward to adding the female vocals that will make these songs complete and hopefully camouflage this old man’s fading talents.

                So, anyway, we recorded until 3 PM and then we loaded my pickup full of sound equipment and headed to a mission in downtown Petros. Downtown Petros is like a church on one end and the mission on the other and a few more houses and buildings, but the hills are full of people, many of which are poor. So Abishai and I set up the sound equipment in the mission as another crew of ladies prepared and set out a very nice Thanksgiving Dinner complete with turkey and all the trimmings.

                Abishai and I ate a bite early so that when the locals arrived, we could sing for them as they ate.

                After a while an older lady came up and offered to sing with us. She seemed to know all of the old Gospel songs and so we handed her a mic and guess what? We had three part harmony all evening. It was great fun.

                A group of teenage girls came up at one point, put in a CD and did what they called a dance, although in reality, they did the whole song in sign language as the recording artist sang.   It was really very touching.

                Meanwhile a prayer team was praying for those who requested prayer. I could tell from the intensity of their prayers that they were doing a deep ministry to some of the hurting people in the community. I think there were about 40 people in attendance and everyone seemed to be having a very good time eating and visiting and listening to the music.

                At one point Abishai and I took a break as Abishai went around greeting all of the people whom he seemed to know by name, both young and old, in fact all of the children and the young people came up to hug him and just to hang around him. Abishai comes to this mission about 3 times a week, even as he juggles work and recording sessions for several people.

                I told Abishai I could see why he wouldn’t be gaining weight any time soon. His entire intake of food for the day was an apple and a cookie and even at the evening Thanksgiving dinner, he only took a few bites and then he was off hugging and visiting those who arrived.

                One of the highlights for me came when I saw Lucy in the crowd and she came up to me with a beautiful smile and through a Spanish interpreter she told me that our prayers had been answered. Lucy had been a part of the crew that helped put together 288 food baskets for the community of Clinton,
TN two weeks earlier. She and I had worked side by side in the assembly line and we struck up a friendship. This was a challenging friendship to be sure because Lucy doesn’t speak English and I don’t speak but a few words of Spanish.

                Fortunately Chris, the guy on my right was bilingual and so he helped us from time to time. And I having run out of Spanish words, resorted to singing her a song that we had learned in our trip to South America in the 60’s. It was an old Hymn called “Lift Up the Trumpet and loud let it ring. Jesus is coming again.” We had learned it in Spanish for our trip to South America. When I was done with the song, she crossed her arms over her heart and exclaimed. “ Si, si Christo mue pronto vendra.”

                When we had finished packing all the food on that Thursday, she had brought two of her friends, one of whom spoke English and they asked me to pray for them. It seemed that Lucy wanted to attend the Spanish Church that is a part of our Clinton congregation and meets in the afternoon. Lucy wanted to attend church, but her boss would not let her off on Sundays and Lucy didn’t know what to do.

                So the four of us joined hands in a circle right there in the midst of everything and I prayed most earnestly that God would make a way for Lucy to attend church. I prayed that God would change the heart of her boss and or change the circumstances so that Lucy could become a vibrant part of the Body of Christ. So this is why Lucy was so excited to tell me last night that God had answered her prayers very quickly and within two weeks God had changed the situation and her boss was now allowing her to attend church.

                So, at any rate Lucy assured me last night that we, Lucy and her husband and I are best of Amigos in Christ, even though we share about five words in common. But we have the Holy Spirit and as such, I feel such a strong bond of love for them… and it makes me want to take a refresher course in Spanish just so I can better communicate with the Spanish speaking people in our congregation.

                Well, things at the mission wound up at about 8:30 PM so Abishai and I loaded my pickup with all the sound equipment and took it back to his house. It took me about a half hour to drive home after that so I arrived home at about 9:30 PM… too full of the day’s events to go directly to bed,  I sat in my chair in the living room and read until 10 PM to unwind a bit. So that was my 20 your day.

                Being retired doesn’t have to be boring. In fact, some of the greatest purposes of our lives can finally be realized. For one thing, once the rat race for survival is over, then we are set free to love and to serve others.

                For most of my life I have longed to know deep and genuine love for people. To me, my own love seemed like a shallow thing… like nothing ever broke through the shell of self that seemed to be around me. We can create an illusion of love by handing out food baskets on Thanksgiving or Christmas, but such love as that can be a feel-good kind of sentimental love that doesn’t really involve your heart.

                I have  in recent years prayed for that deeper more genuine love… the kind that goes the extra mile… that gets its hands dirty… that is faithful to the calling on our lives. Even writing and recording music can be a self-fulfilling thing in which we love ourselves for what we do… but I want more. I want the real thing right down to the core of my being.

                When Jesus returns I want Him to be able to look into the depths of my heart and find real love there. We may be able to fool others with our actions and our pretentions, but not God. I don’t want to be found as an empty shell, a hollow person wearing a Christian mask. I want rivers of living water flowing from my innermost being. John 7:37-39.

                You see, we can have all of our doctrinal ducks in a row and still be an empty suit… and quite frankly, Jesus is not going to quiz us concerning our doctrine when He comes, He is rather going to examine us according to our love and how it played out in our lives. We become obsessed with our intellectual relationship with truth and yet our hearts can be cold, like Pharisees who knew the “truth” most thoroughly, but didn’t recognize Jesus, for He; rather than sitting in their intellectual halls of feigned piety, was out ministering to the poor, the lame, the blind and the hungry.

                My priorities have had to change drastically over the last few years, for in spite of a lifetime of ministry of one sort or another, so little of it had the kind of love in it that I think Jesus is looking for.

                Leaving our intellectual facades behind, we need to become obsessed with Jesus… filled to the brim with His Spirit so that His fruit and His life can be manifested through us. We need His gifts of the Spirit so that we can minister to others with more than wishful thinking. We need prayers that are backed by the love and the power of Jesus.

                Life doesn’t have to be boring. We have so much to learn in this life and most of that learning comes from hands on experience. Church is a great mission field. Only a small percentage of the attendees honestly know and love Jesus. Most are struggling on in life as if He doesn’t exist except in theory. IF we are ever going to minister life to them, then we ourselves need to be genuinely born again and Holy Spirit filled so that we have something more to offer the world than mere words.

                Many people will hold up their placard full of right doctrines on judgment day, only to discover that Jesus is looking beyond their list to their hearts and they will be hit with the sudden and uncomfortable feeling that they have invested their lives in the wrong goals.

                We need to have a shift in our priorities so that they reflect the same priorities that Jesus exhibited while on earth. Are we becoming scribes and Pharisees, or are we becoming disciples of Jesus?

                Like I said, we have much to pray about because flesh and blood cannot produce the kind of love that Jesus is looking for in His followers. Only that which is produced in and through us by His Holy and wonderful Spirit will stand the test of time. Eternal and holy things can only be produced by an eternal and holy God.

                If I could make an altar call right now I would. Come to Jesus and make Him the central focus and power of your life.

                I shared a busy day in my life only to let you know that apart from true and genuine love… a love produced by the Holy Spirit, all of that activity would be eternally worthless. The only things that really count for eternity are those things that we do through the Holy Spirit in genuine love. This is the REST wherewith He has called the weary to rest that the surpassing greatness may be of God and not of ourselves. Eph. 1:19-23, 1 Cor. 13:1-13