5/28/13

There were twin brothers from a small town in Texas.  The two brothers grew up in extreme poverty.  Their father was an alcoholic and their mother was a domestic worker.  They grew up with perpetual dysfunction and deprivation.  Then, one day on the way home, their parents were involved in an auto accident and died at the scene.  The brothers’ situation worsened.  By age 17 they had separated and gone their separate ways.  Years later, an aunt decided to find the boys and bring them together for a family reunion.  One of the brothers had become a wealthy engineer who owned a construction company.  He had a sweet wife and three bright kids.  They were deeply involved in a Bible-based, Christ-centered church. The other brother had himself become an alcoholic with a history of unemployment and broken relationships; a man who lived his life without a thought of God.   At the reunion, the aunt first asked the engineer, “How did your life turn out like this?”  His response…  “What would you expect with a childhood like mine?”  Then she asked the other brother the same question… “How did your life turn out like this?”  His response to the question was identical to his twin brother’s… “What would you expect with a childhood like mine?” 

Someone has said, “Men are not destined by the things that happen to them, but by their response to the things that happen to them.”  A wise proverb says it this way, “The same sun that melts wax hardens clay.”  A difficult life experience will either make you more submissive and devoted to God or more resistant and hostile to Him.  The next time you are faced with a difficulty, remember that you have a choice about how it will affect you.  You can allow this problem to soften your heart toward God or you can allow it to harden your heart with bitterness.  If a person chooses the latter path, they have only themselves to blame for how it will play out in his/her life on earth as well as the greater life.  

Bottom line: We all have our choices and we will live with the rewards or the consequences of those choices.

Pray with me… Our Loving Father, from the beginning you have made us like Yourself, with the power to think, reason and choose. 

This freedom resulted in the first pair, in their time, and all of us, in our own time, to sin.  But, you did not abandon us.  In Your great love, personified in Jesus Christ, your Son, you sought us and saved us.  We praise and worship you for the choice we can make that is more significant than all others.  We choose the Jesus way again today.  In His great Name we pray… amen.

Blessings,

Pastor Ken