All dads are familiar with "daddy jobs." Daddy jobs are jobs that everyone else in the family gladly relies on dad to do. Dads get to deal with fun stuff like snakes in the house, spiders in the bathtub, and going outside at 2 a.m. to see why the dog is barking.
But there are other "daddy jobs" that a dad is called on to do because he's the only one strong enough to do them. The universal daddy job of all households is opening stuff. Well-taped packages that require a knife or sharp instrument? (Insert "toolman grunt" here). Daddy job. Sticky doors and drawers that swell and won't open easily? Daddy job.
The most common of all is the stuck jar lid. It can be a jelly jar, hot sauce jar, mayonnaise jar, or a jar of any kind with food products inside --- Daddy job.
"Dad, can you open this?" I've yet to figure out if that is a request, a command, or a challenge to my manhood. I always assume the latter and spring to the challenge. Thankfully, there haven't been too many that caused my face to turn red or my veins to thicken on my forehead. Most of them are opened rather easily. But every once in a while, a challenger comes along that is a worthy adversary.
"Dad, can you open this," asks your six-year-old daughter as she hands you a jar of preserves that has been passed down from grandma and has been sitting in an outside pantry rusting away since Truman was president. Without hesitation, you find yourself in a death-grip with that jar twisting with all your might. That old rusty jar takes you to your knees while your daughter looks at you in disappointment. You feel like Superman trying to open a jar of kryptonite and Lois Lane is shocked to see that you can't even open a jar!
After two or three innings, the old jar lid loosens and loses the battle against the man of the house. And yes, the man of the house takes a victory lap around the kitchen.
In the pantry of your life, there may be some things that need opening that fall into the category of "Daddy jobs." Not your earthly daddy. Your heavenly Father. There are some things that only the Father can open. Whether in your life or in the life of someone close to you, you can approach your Father and ask, "Daddy, can You open this?"
He can. God can open closed minds, barricaded hearts, and doors that we thought were permanently shut. Do you have a loved one whose heart and mind is closed toward God? Ask your heavenly Daddy to open it. Do you have a friend or someone you love deeply who has closed the door of their heart to you? Hand it over to your Father. Do you find it difficult to understand what the Bible is saying when you sit down to read it? Ask God to open your understanding. Luke 24:45 says, "And He (Jesus) opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures."
Whatever the jar and however tight the lid, take it to Daddy. If He can open the closed tomb of His lifeless Son and bring Him back to life, He can open anything.
Perry Crisp
Showing posts with label power of God. Show all posts
Showing posts with label power of God. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Achoo
"Stop trusting in man, who has but a breath in his nostrils" (Isaiah 2:22 NIV).
Name your hero. Tell me who your favorite athlete is. Shower me with excessive accolades of an incredible actor. Convince me of the greatness of a politician, entrepeneur, philanthropist, or business executive. Then hear my question: Can he hold more than one noseful of air at a time?
The greatest of all earthlings are equipped with one set of both nostrils and lungs. We pull in tiny amounts of air and push tiny amounts back out. Not very impressive.
Should we get a cold or suck daily doses of smoke-filled poison into our lungs, we find ourselves fighting a huge battle over a little event called breathing. We wheeze, we hack, we struggle to get it in and back out. Sometimes we have to take a seat so we can "catch our breath." My, what powerful creatures we are! Yeah, right.
Isaiah is asking us to think soberly about the confidence we place in man. Do we really want to put all our marbles in humanism when two marbles appropriately placed can plug one up and end his life?
The Message reads, "Quit scraping and fawning over mere humans, so full of themselves, so full of hot air!"
Stop being amazed by what man can do between wheezes. We can be easily stopped by simply being stopped up.
God, the creator and sustainer of all that exists, is the One we should adore. He puffed a little whiff of His air into the first human lungs and now, billions of people later, we are still reaping the benefits.
If we will personally invite Him to enter our lives through trusting in His Son, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for us, God will grant us eternal life. So that, our last breath of oxygen on earth ends nothing but our flesh and blood. The soul's oxygen never flickers.
If you want to compare man's nostril capacity to God's, spend some time on the following passages of Scripture: Exodus 15:8-10, 2nd Samuel 22:14-16, Job 4:9, 34:14-15, 37:10, Psalm 18:15, Isaiah 11:4, 30:28, and 40:7-8.
Unlike God, we are all, from time to time...
...tissue dependent
Perry Crisp
Name your hero. Tell me who your favorite athlete is. Shower me with excessive accolades of an incredible actor. Convince me of the greatness of a politician, entrepeneur, philanthropist, or business executive. Then hear my question: Can he hold more than one noseful of air at a time?
The greatest of all earthlings are equipped with one set of both nostrils and lungs. We pull in tiny amounts of air and push tiny amounts back out. Not very impressive.
Should we get a cold or suck daily doses of smoke-filled poison into our lungs, we find ourselves fighting a huge battle over a little event called breathing. We wheeze, we hack, we struggle to get it in and back out. Sometimes we have to take a seat so we can "catch our breath." My, what powerful creatures we are! Yeah, right.
Isaiah is asking us to think soberly about the confidence we place in man. Do we really want to put all our marbles in humanism when two marbles appropriately placed can plug one up and end his life?
The Message reads, "Quit scraping and fawning over mere humans, so full of themselves, so full of hot air!"
Stop being amazed by what man can do between wheezes. We can be easily stopped by simply being stopped up.
God, the creator and sustainer of all that exists, is the One we should adore. He puffed a little whiff of His air into the first human lungs and now, billions of people later, we are still reaping the benefits.
If we will personally invite Him to enter our lives through trusting in His Son, Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for us, God will grant us eternal life. So that, our last breath of oxygen on earth ends nothing but our flesh and blood. The soul's oxygen never flickers.
If you want to compare man's nostril capacity to God's, spend some time on the following passages of Scripture: Exodus 15:8-10, 2nd Samuel 22:14-16, Job 4:9, 34:14-15, 37:10, Psalm 18:15, Isaiah 11:4, 30:28, and 40:7-8.
Unlike God, we are all, from time to time...
...tissue dependent
Perry Crisp
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Who's in the Right House?
"But there is a God in heaven" (Daniel 2:28).
A refreshing reminder. I don't know about you, but I sure could use it. As presidential candidates are picking running mates, prancing in football stadiums, tootin' their own horns, making promises that we all know they won't keep, vying for attention, and elevating themselves to savior-hood... let's just remind ourselves who the real thing is.
I don't stand on either side of the aisle when I say this. I'm not Democrat or Republican. I'm Theocratican. I believe God has the last word on all of us and our security rests solely in Him. When God makes a promise, you know He doesn't have a two-sided mouth. It'll happen.
You would think that this election was the most important thing in the whole wide world or in the history of humanity by the way the news channels and papers are talking. Oh really? Maybe it would be IF there wasn't a God in heaven.
You see, heaven is higher than the white house. Just thought I should remind you. The human in the white house can veto the humans on capital hill. But the God in heaven has veto power over them all. The human in the white house can appoint judges and justices. But the God in heaven holds the only gavel that matters. His justice is consistent and overrides man's inconsistent idea of justice.
Democrats are afraid that McCain will be four more years of the last eight. Republicans are afraid that Obama will be... well, they're not sure what he will be. But they don't want to find out. Everyone wrings their hands in fear.
Need I remind you? Republicans survived eight years of Clinton and Democrats survived eight years of Bush. Have any back-to-back, two-term presidents been as despised and maligned by their opposing parties as these two have?
Yet we survived. We're still the most powerful, affluent nation in the world. While others walk ten miles to use a telephone, our five-year-olds are packin' blackberries and surfing the net from their tricycles. Can we all agree that we can probably survive just about anything as long as there's a God in heaven?
I just thought we should start the day with this important announcement: "but there is a God in heaven..."
From the Platform of the Theocratican Convention,
Perry Crisp
A refreshing reminder. I don't know about you, but I sure could use it. As presidential candidates are picking running mates, prancing in football stadiums, tootin' their own horns, making promises that we all know they won't keep, vying for attention, and elevating themselves to savior-hood... let's just remind ourselves who the real thing is.
I don't stand on either side of the aisle when I say this. I'm not Democrat or Republican. I'm Theocratican. I believe God has the last word on all of us and our security rests solely in Him. When God makes a promise, you know He doesn't have a two-sided mouth. It'll happen.
You would think that this election was the most important thing in the whole wide world or in the history of humanity by the way the news channels and papers are talking. Oh really? Maybe it would be IF there wasn't a God in heaven.
You see, heaven is higher than the white house. Just thought I should remind you. The human in the white house can veto the humans on capital hill. But the God in heaven has veto power over them all. The human in the white house can appoint judges and justices. But the God in heaven holds the only gavel that matters. His justice is consistent and overrides man's inconsistent idea of justice.
Democrats are afraid that McCain will be four more years of the last eight. Republicans are afraid that Obama will be... well, they're not sure what he will be. But they don't want to find out. Everyone wrings their hands in fear.
Need I remind you? Republicans survived eight years of Clinton and Democrats survived eight years of Bush. Have any back-to-back, two-term presidents been as despised and maligned by their opposing parties as these two have?
Yet we survived. We're still the most powerful, affluent nation in the world. While others walk ten miles to use a telephone, our five-year-olds are packin' blackberries and surfing the net from their tricycles. Can we all agree that we can probably survive just about anything as long as there's a God in heaven?
I just thought we should start the day with this important announcement: "but there is a God in heaven..."
From the Platform of the Theocratican Convention,
Perry Crisp
Monday, August 25, 2008
More Power
"I will meditate on the glorious splendor of Your majesty, and on Your wondrous works" (Psalm 145:5).
The power of God is bigger than we figure. Of all that we know about the world around us, we still don't know half of all there is to know about the world around us.
Some braniacs say there was no God involved in the creation of the world. It just happened. It evolved. Yeah, right. And Michael Jackson never had cosmetic surgery. He just morphed into his current confusion of self.
God is the creator behind all creation. The designer behind the design. The lawmaker behind all law. God is the supreme fact of history, science, and philosophy. Take God out of any of those things and you're just a babbling idiot. There will always be a job for you at a major university...but you're still a babbling idiot.
Taking God out of your worldview is like an ant standing on the F1 key of a computer keyboard thinking that the F1 key is all there is to the computer.
Apparently, when our heads swell with knowledge, we can't imagine anything bigger than us. We strain to contain all the knowledge we have of this vast universe. So to think of a super-sized God looming over the unfathomable might be a bit too much for an overstretched cranium.
If the biggest river you've ever seen is the Mississippi, and you've never heard of a place called South America, then it might be hard for someone to convince you of the size of the Amazon.
If you've studied the Niagara Falls and been overwhelmed by its raw power and majesty, and you've never heard of the African continent, you might scoff at a South African who says he's seen falls five times greater than the Niagara Falls. You would doubt that such a river as the Zambesi exists that could be two miles wide and take a 400 foot plunge. Your mind could not fathom the 35 million horsepower of the Victoria Falls compared to the 7 million of Niagara that your mind already has trouble wrapping around.
That's a place you've never seen and a power you've never experienced. But because you have neither seen nor experienced it, does that make it untrue? The same is true of a believer who speaks of the power he or she has experienced in God.
Thank God I learned to be a believing man before I ever became a thinking man. Thank God I listened to the testimonies of those whose souls were saved by a super-sized Savior named Jesus Christ. Thank God I learned that there is power in the blood.
God is bigger than we figure. And I'm not finished with this. Stay tuned.
Perry Crisp
The power of God is bigger than we figure. Of all that we know about the world around us, we still don't know half of all there is to know about the world around us.
Some braniacs say there was no God involved in the creation of the world. It just happened. It evolved. Yeah, right. And Michael Jackson never had cosmetic surgery. He just morphed into his current confusion of self.
God is the creator behind all creation. The designer behind the design. The lawmaker behind all law. God is the supreme fact of history, science, and philosophy. Take God out of any of those things and you're just a babbling idiot. There will always be a job for you at a major university...but you're still a babbling idiot.
Taking God out of your worldview is like an ant standing on the F1 key of a computer keyboard thinking that the F1 key is all there is to the computer.
Apparently, when our heads swell with knowledge, we can't imagine anything bigger than us. We strain to contain all the knowledge we have of this vast universe. So to think of a super-sized God looming over the unfathomable might be a bit too much for an overstretched cranium.
If the biggest river you've ever seen is the Mississippi, and you've never heard of a place called South America, then it might be hard for someone to convince you of the size of the Amazon.
If you've studied the Niagara Falls and been overwhelmed by its raw power and majesty, and you've never heard of the African continent, you might scoff at a South African who says he's seen falls five times greater than the Niagara Falls. You would doubt that such a river as the Zambesi exists that could be two miles wide and take a 400 foot plunge. Your mind could not fathom the 35 million horsepower of the Victoria Falls compared to the 7 million of Niagara that your mind already has trouble wrapping around.
That's a place you've never seen and a power you've never experienced. But because you have neither seen nor experienced it, does that make it untrue? The same is true of a believer who speaks of the power he or she has experienced in God.
Thank God I learned to be a believing man before I ever became a thinking man. Thank God I listened to the testimonies of those whose souls were saved by a super-sized Savior named Jesus Christ. Thank God I learned that there is power in the blood.
God is bigger than we figure. And I'm not finished with this. Stay tuned.
Perry Crisp
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