We just returned from a long camping weekend. We started camping only after I discovered tents that were completely self-enclosed.  Even the floor was sewn into the walls and ceiling.  Nothing could get in there but us!  For a city girl this was very important.  Our first tent was a hexagonal dome.  It was put out by a company called Camel, and the brown tent did look a little something like a camel’s hump.
            Most of the time, we would pack up to come home from a camping trip with the tent still wet from the morning’s dew.  That meant we had to set it up out in the sunny field once we got home to let it dry out.  We never bothered to stake it since it usually dried in under a half hour.  As it dried, one of us crawled inside with the portable vacuum to get all the dirt out as well.  My younger son Nathan was enjoying that chore once while I hung out sleeping bags and tarps to dry and air out.  A little breeze came up and suddenly I was hearing this little voice saying, “What’s going on?  Hey!  HELP!!!”  I looked up in time to see that self-contained, flat bottomed dome, rolling on its sides across the field in the wind, with my little boy evidently tumbling around inside—and from the sounds of it, not nearly as gracefully as a hamster on its wheel.
            Nathan blossomed late.  At that time he was about 11, still under 100 pounds, and only about 4 and a half feet tall.  Add to that the fact that the tent was not grounded with stakes, and you had someone ready to be easily tossed around in the wind.
            I cannot think of any better reminder to ground myself in the doctrine of Christ.  Too many people out there are willing to expound in beautiful moving words that sound good but which could easily upset my faith.  Too many times I rely on what I have always known, or on some brother I respect to tell me what to believe.  I sit in Bible classes sometimes and shake my head.  Whenever a certain topic comes up, I can almost always tell you who will say what, because few have bothered to look at things from a new perspective, to dig a little deeper, to ask questions, to even think it is all right to ask a question without being looked at skeptically.  Too many times I have visited women’s classes in other places and looked at the cotton candy lesson being studied, wondering if these empty calories are doing anyone’s soul any good at all.  We call them classes because we are supposed to study deeply and learn new things, not splash around in the shallow end of the pool with the children, trying not to get our hair wet.
            The only way to avoid confusion is to ask questions; the only way to grow—and we should all be growing, no matter how long we have been Christians--is to search the scriptures diligently; the only way to build a solid foundation is to learn how to study on my own; the only way to remain steadfast is to gain enough spiritual weight to stake down my tabernacle with stakes I have discovered myself, and hammered deeply into the ground.
 
Till we all attain unto the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; that we may be no longer children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the slight of men, in craftiness, after the wiles of error, but speaking truth in love, may grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ. Eph 4:13-15.
 
Dene Ward

On June 9, 1972, the Black Hills were struck by a severe thunderstorm that simply would not go away.  Over six hours it dropped twelve to fourteen inches of rain.  Rapid City, South Dakota, was hit the hardest.  It lies along the Rapid Creek, which is usually five yards wide and only a few feet deep but it rose steadily from late afternoon into the late night.  At 10:45 pm, local time, the dam at Canyon Lake, which is on the northern edge of the town, broke, sending a wall of water running as fast as 50 mph through the town.
            A deputy reported that he had to abandon his car because a two story house was coming down the street toward him.  A retired truck driver had left his pickup to try to help someone in a stalled car and wound up being swept away and pinned against a wall by a floating tree with his head barely above water for seven hours before being rescued.  His wife and two children managed to survive in the pickup all night, rescuing one man by grabbing him as he was swept by.  Another family lost four of their five children, including a two year old, when they tried to escape their vehicle.  The water was simply too strong for them to hold on or be held onto.  In all, 238 people died and more than 3000 were injured, over 1300 homes and 5000 vehicles were destroyed, and damages reached $165 million.  Multiply that several times for an amount in today's dollars. (latimes.com)
            I cannot imagine the terror those people felt as a wall of water 12 feet high came barreling toward them.  We have only a small inkling from our experiences.
            We live on a hillside.  You don’t really notice it when you first drive onto the property.  The hill is shallow as hills go, dropping about twenty feet in five hundred.  In another climate one would seldom think anything of it.  But in Florida, in the summer, torrential downpours are common.  Not too long ago we had two and a half inches come down in less than thirty minutes.  Two or three days before we had six inches, but it took all day to accumulate that.  When nearly half that much pours out of the sky in such a short time, you feel like ten have fallen instead.
            It was as if a giant bucket were being upended over us.  We could hardly see the blueberries only a hundred feet away.  The roar on the metal roof was deafening.  The rushing water overwhelmed the culvert in the drive and washed over the road and out to the garden where it ran against the berm in a narrow creek clearly visible from the house.  We had built that berm precisely because of rains like this one—we were tired of wading “downstream” to rescue washed away garden plants. 
            Eventually we left our viewing station on the porch which was not much shelter in a rain like that—the merest breeze left us damp and shivering, even in the summer.  So we stepped back inside and looked out the windows to the north.  Now you could really tell—we are definitely on a hill.  Water ran like a river across the entire width of the yard, from the front steps to the fence, ten to twelve inches deep.  We watched leaves, twigs, and moss float “downstream” to the run on the east side of the property.  After the rain stopped, it kept running, draining the whole hillside, for another two hours.
            A week after that rain, I walked the path the water had taken.  Leaves were washed into piles a foot deep along the runnel.  Limbs hung up on some of the bushes but others, dragged by the running water, lay piled up against the fence which had acted as a sieve as the water ran through it.  Channels several inches deep marked the dried mud, and the grass was still bent over in the direction the water had flowed.  Running water is powerful.  And that leads us to an even more powerful Flood.
            The flood continued forty days on the earth. The waters increased and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters prevailed and increased greatly on the earth, and the ark floated on the face of the waters. And the waters prevailed so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered. The waters prevailed above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep, Gen 7:17-20.
            The waters of the great Flood “prevailed.”  Those waters not only covered the earth, they drowned every living creature on it that was not in the ark or swimming in the newly created worldwide ocean.  Have you ever seen a flash flood?  Have you ever heard the stories of one like the one in the Black Hills?  No one can win against those “prevailing” waters.  If you try to hang on to something, you simply wear out and are washed downstream. 
            The same word is used in Ex 17:11: So Joshua did as Moses told him, and fought with Amalek, while Moses, Aaron, and Hur went up to the top of the hill. Whenever Moses held up his hand, Israel prevailed, and whenever he lowered his hand, Amalek prevailed.  We are talking about winning a war with that word; that’s the strength implied in its use.  It should be no surprise that “prevailed” is also translated “strong” and “mighty.”
            So why is that important?  Because the same Hebrew word is used in Psalm 117:2.  For great [that same Hebrew word] is His steadfast love toward us.  God’s love for us is strong; it is mighty.  It is like rushing water that carries along everything in its path.  It is like an army winning a war.  Sometimes we seem to doubt that.  “But I’ve been so bad,” we say, “how can God love me?”  He can love you because His love is great. It can prevail against the worst of sins.
            The next time you doubt it, think about flood waters.  Think about an army that can win a war.  God’s love is just like those things.  It prevails over all.
 
​I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand  John 10:28,29.
 
Dene Ward

I am different from most women, I guess.  I do not enjoy those cutesy-pie sayings that sound like they came straight out of a sugar canister.  For one thing, I think they can engender the opposite feeling they are intending to--guilt, mainly.  How many times have you heard that even if you don’t feel good, you should go to the assembly because it will make you feel better when you leave?  Yes, on occasion, it does just that, mainly because I was too busy having a pity party and the services put my mind on things besides me. 
           But what about the person who is genuinely ill, or who is so old and feeble that he needs to rest after putting one sock on?  My own Daddy reached that point before he passed on.  Do I really think that going to church and spreading germs to the elderly and small children is going to make me feel better, and even if it did, wasn’t that awfully selfish of me?  Or if pushing myself too hard could cause me to collapse during the services, what great good did that accomplish for anyone else?  Yet sometimes these people do push themselves—they are in fact the ones most likely to push themselves--so they come and infect everyone else, because they have been made to feel guilty for not doing so by things I have come to call duck-billed platitudes.
            I see another problem with some of these things—they smack a little of the health and wealth gospel.  “Sacrifice for the Lord isn’t sacrifice if you really love the Lord.”  Nonsense.  Try that one on a first century Christian who is about to have his throat chomped on and his belly ripped open by the lions in the Coliseum.  Sacrifice feels like sacrifice and God never promised anything else.  What He did promise was that sacrifice is worth it.  That doesn’t mean anything if you have annulled the pain of the sacrifice.
            The things we need to hear are the true things.  Yea, and all that would live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution...For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps, 2Tim 3:12; 1Pet 2:20-21.  What we need is to be told how to endure what will surely come if we live like Christ did, not how to avoid it or worse yet, how to make it “fun.”
            Sometimes life is just plain hard.  That was the punishment we got when we were thrown out of Eden.  Christians are not immune to that penalty, we are just forgiven for it.
            Be strong, God is always telling us in His Word.  Be courageous.  It isn’t courage to turn everything into one giant tea party.  That’s denial, and I see too many Christians living in that state.  And this is what it leads to when you finally realize you cannot platitude your way out of it—“Why did this happen to me?”  This is why:  We live in an imperfect world, made that way by sin, which, no matter how much we like to believe otherwise, we have participated in.  And it won’t get any better.  Tragedies are a part of life.  BUT---
            We live in hope of a better world, a better place that will be perfect and will never end.  That is what you need to remember, not a bunch of saccharine sayings on poster after poster after poster.  I have something much better, and so do you if you will take hold of it.  It does not tell us that everything will be wonderful in this life, that God will spare us from anything painful.  Instead it promises pain, but it also says this:
         Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Rom 8:35-39.
 
Dene Ward

When you come to enjoy baseball later in life as I have, you often take for granted things that were not part of the game in the beginning.  Pinch hitters are usually good hitters who are called upon later in the game to step in for a batter who has not hit well.  Often it is a pivotal moment in the game, two outs with two on, and a last chance to tie or win.  The pinch hitter then substitutes for that player he replaced for the remainder of the game either in his defensive position or in another as the team switches positions to accommodate the pinch hitter's abilities.
            The first Major League Baseball player to collect a pinch hit was 22 year old Jack Doyle of the Cleveland Spiders on June 7, 1892, as they played the Brooklyn Grooms.  He came off the bench for pitcher George Davies.  In spite of his hit, Cleveland lost 2-1.  Doyle had a 17 year career with ten teams.  His best years were 1894 with the New York Giants (.367) and 1897 with the Baltimore Orioles (.354).  He finished with a batting average of .299 in 1564 games with 516 stolen bases.
            There have been many times in my life when I would have loved to given way to a pinch hitter--some rugged health procedures, a few rough times economically, a speaking engagement or two that still haunt me because I did not feel comfortable with my delivery.  But we all know that won't work.  Life happens and the things we learn as we endure it are what make or break us as people, especially people of God.
            But it seems to me that some of us just expect a pinch hitter to step in here or there.  The preacher is often our batter of choice.  "It's the preacher's job to visit," we say, which is nowhere found in the scripture, just in our minds as we watch our denominational friends' "pastor system" and try to copy it and at the same time claim to know the true Biblical definition of a pastor.  Instead, the New Testament squarely lays the visiting obligation on every disciple as he ministers to those in need.  Pure and genuine religion in the sight of God the Father means visiting orphans and widows in their distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you (Jas 1:27).
            Others seem to think that it is the church's job to educate their children in the scriptures.  On two 45 minute sessions a week?  Assuming they bother to take their children to both, and assuming they help them get their Bible lessons and make sure they take their workbooks to class.  It has been my experience that the ones who want the church to do the educating are the same ones who won't do this other minimal requirement as godly parents.  You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates (Deut 6:5-9).  Fathers [bring up] your children…in the discipline and instruction of the Lord (Eph 6:4).
            I am sure you can think of other ways we depend upon a pinch hitter rather than doing what God requires of us individually.  But how about this one?  Another word for a pinch hitter might be "scapegoat."  Any time we refuse to take responsibility for our actions, blaming it on someone who "offended" us, or our culture, or the way we were raised, or anything else we can come up with, we think that that person or thing or system will now be held accountable by God (or society or the law of the land) and we are in the clear.  Simply by saying, "It's not my fault," we have admitted that we made a bad choice, and the one God will hold accountable is the one who made that original choice, no matter how long ago it was nor how many other events happened before or afterward.  If I have gotten myself into trouble, I am at fault.  Period.  That's the way God counts it.
            There are no pinch hitters on God's team.
 
I am the LORD. I have spoken; it shall come to pass; I will do it. I will not go back; I will not spare; I will not relent; according to your ways and your deeds you will be judged, declares the Lord GOD (Ezek 24:14).
He will render to each one according to his works: to those who by patience in well-doing seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; but for those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, there will be wrath and fury (Rom 2:6-8).
 
Dene Ward

On June 6, 1933, Richard Hollingshead opened the first drive-in theater.  Camden, New Jersey, was its home and the price was twenty-five cents per car per person.  That night the movie was "Wives Beware."
I remember those theaters well.  Across the river from our small town, an only slightly larger town boasted one that offered a double feature for $1 a carload.   It was thirty years later so naturally the price had risen, but still, what a deal!
            Our family usually arrived about fifteen minutes early to procure the best spot.  If you were too close all we kids in the backseat could see were headless actors.  But you certainly didn’t want to end up on the back row or next to the concession stand amid all sorts of distractions.
            Once you found a decent spot, you checked the speaker before anything else.  If it didn’t work, and some did not, you went on the hunt again.  Once the speaker situation was in order you spent a few minutes edging up and down the hump to raise the front half of the car to just the right angle so the line of sight worked for everyone.  (That first New Jersey drive-in did not have the hump.  I am not sure how anyone actually saw the movie.)  Then you had to deal with obstructions.  Our rearview mirror could be turned completely vertical, but other cars had one you could fold flat against the ceiling.  Headrests on the front seat would have been a catastrophe, but no one had them back then so we avoided that problem altogether.
            Now that set-up was complete, we rolled down the windows so we could get any breeze possible in the warm humid night air.  Along with the chirping crickets, the croaking frogs, and the traffic passing on the street behind the screen, we also had to put up with buzzing mosquitoes.  My mother usually laid a pyrethrum mosquito coil on the dashboard and lit it, the smoke rising and circulating through the car all during the movies, the coil only half burned when the second “THE END” rolled down the screen.
            At that price we never saw first run movies.  Usually they were westerns with John Wayne or Glenn Ford or Jimmy Stewart, or romantic comedies with Rock Hudson and Doris Day.  Occasionally we got an old Biblical epic like David and Bathsheba or Sodom and Gomorrah, both about as scripturally accurate as those westerns were historically accurate, which is to say, not very.  The only Disney we got was Tron, but that was back when it was a bomb not a cult classic.  Still, we enjoyed our family outing every other month or so.
            And we got one thing that I am positive no one born after 1970 ever got.  When the screen finally lit up about ten minutes before the movie started, after the Coming Attractions and ads for the snacks at the concession stand—and oh, could we smell that popcorn and butter all night long—was the following ad, complete with voiceover in case you missed the point.  “CH__ CH.  What’s missing?  U R.  Join the church of your choice and attend this Sunday.”  And that was not an ad from any of the local denominations—it was a public service announcement!
            But this is what we all did—instead of being grateful that anything like that would even be put out for the general public, we fussed about its inaccuracy.  We were bad, as my Daddy would say, about living in the objective case.  When that’s all you see, you miss some prime teaching opportunities.
            So let’s get this out of the way first.  It isn’t our choice, it’s God’s.  It is, more to the point since he built it and died for it, the Lord’s church.  We should be looking not for a church that teaches what we like to hear, but what he taught, obeying his commands, not our preferences.  And you don’t “join” it.  The Lord is the one who adds to the church, the church in the kingdom sense, which is the only word used in the New Testament for what we in our “greater” wisdom call the “universal” sense.  But that’s where we miss the teaching opportunity because for some reason we ignore this verse:
            And when [Saul] was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: and they were all afraid of him, not believing that he was a disciple, Acts 9:26.
            Did you see that?  Immediately after his conversion, Saul tried to join a local group, what we insist on calling “placing membership” in spite of that phrase never appearing anywhere in the text.  (For people who claim to “use Bible words for Bible things” we are certainly inconsistent.)  The New Testament example over and over is to be a part of a local group of believers—not to think you can be a Christian independent of any local congregation or simply float from group to group. 
            Why do people do that?  Because joining oneself to a group involves accountability to that group, and especially to the leadership of that group.  It involves serving other Christians.  It involves growing in knowledge.  It means I must arrange my schedule around their meetings rather than my worldly priorities.  The New Testament is clear that some things cannot be done outside the assembly.  I Cor 5:4,5; 1 Cor 11 and 16, along with Acts 20 are the obvious ones.  That doesn’t count the times they all came together to receive reports, e.g. Acts 14:27, and plain statements like “the elders among you” which logically infers a group that met together.  Then there are all those “one another” passages that I cannot do if there is no “one another” for me to do them with.
            We are called the flock of God in several passages.  You may find a lone wolf out in the wild once in awhile, but you will never find a lone sheep that isn’t alone because he is anything but lost.  It is my responsibility to be part of a group of believers.  We encourage one another, we help one another, we serve another.  Our pooling our assets means we can evangelize the city we live in, the country we live in, even the world.  It means we can help those among us who are needy.  It means we can purchase and make use of tools that we could not otherwise afford.  It means we can pool talents and actually have enough members available for teaching classes without experiencing burn-out.  It means we are far more likely to find men qualified to tend “the flock of God among them.”
            So while God may add me to the kingdom when I submit to His will in baptism, it is my duty to find a group of like-minded brothers and sisters and serve along side them.  Serve—not be served.  Saul had a hard time “joining himself” to the church in Jerusalem because of his past, but Barnabas knew it was the right thing for him to do and paved the way.     
            CH__CH.  What’s missing?  Is it you?
           
Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing. We ask you, brothers, to respect those who labor among you and are over you in the Lord and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves. And we urge you, brothers, admonish the idle, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with them all, 1 Thes 5:11-14
 
Dene Ward
 

When was the last time you thought about your baptism?  Did you realize that baptism is mentioned in one way or another in well over half the books of the New Testament, and that in the epistles it is a discussion directed toward those who have already been baptized?  Why is it then that we relegate it to first principles only, and ignore it the rest of our lives?
            Paul told the Colossians in 2:11,12 that baptism is the “circumcision” of New Testament Israel.  Instead of removing a piece of flesh, we remove the “old man of flesh.”  So what was circumcision to Old Testament Israel?
            God told Abraham in Genesis 17 that circumcision was a token of the covenant between God and his people. And the uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul shall be cut off from his people; he hath broken my covenant, v 14.
            The Hebrew word for “token,” OTH, is used in a variety of ways in the Old Testament.  In Numbers 2:2 it refers to the banners that waved over a tribe’s encampment to identify them.  In Gen 4:15 it refers to the mark God put on Cain as a sign of his protection.  In Josh 2:12 it was the scarlet cord, a sign of the bargain between Rahab and the spies.   In Ex 4:8,9 God gave Moses miracles to do which showed both the people and Pharaoh that he came from God.  In Josh 4:6 it referred to the pile of stones used to remember the crossing of the Jordan River, a memorial that was to be passed down through the generations.
            If it was so important, why then did the people discontinue it in the wilderness?  For all the people that came out [of Egypt] were circumcised; but all the people that were born in the wilderness by the way as they came forth out of Egypt, they had not circumcised.  For the children of Israel walked forty years in the wilderness, till all the nation, even the men of war that came forth out of Egypt, were consumed, because they hearkened not unto the voice of Jehovah: unto whom Jehovah swore that he would not let them see the land which Jehovah swore unto their fathers that he would give us, a land flowing with milk and honey. And their children, whom he raised up in their stead, these did Joshua circumcise, Josh 5:5-8.
            Maybe I am reading something into this that is not there, but I wonder if God simply did not allow those faithless people to circumcise their children.  He certainly took it seriously when Moses did not circumcise his sons (Ex 4:24-26). Only when the faithless generation of Israelites were all dead did Joshua renew this covenant and its token with their children.
            So here is our question today:  If God were to take similar actions today, would he allow me to have my children baptized?   Or would he consider it a travesty of the covenant for someone as faithless as I, someone who no longer lives up to the baptism I took part in, that symbolic resurrection from the death of sin, to try to teach my children about it and what it means?  How could I even hope to do so?
            The biggest insult a Jew could hurl was “uncircumcised Gentile.”  That is why they stoned Stephen in Acts 7 after he said they were uncircumcised in heart, v 51.  They understood that the token of the covenant with God was not supposed to be merely an outward sign, but a symbol of a faithful relationship.  What is your baptism to you?  Is it merely the last step on the staircase chart of the Plan of Salvation?  Or is it a token, a daily reminder to live like a new person, a child of a covenant relationship with God, a relationship that is more precious to you than anything else in the world?
 
In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism,  in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, Col 2:11-13.
 
Dene Ward

It was a rainy winter, and then a rainy spring.  The summer isn't such a problem because the subtropical sun boils the water out of the ground fairly quickly in spite of constant afternoon thunderstorms.  But on cool days, even with much lower humidity than summer, puddles and boggy ground last much longer.  Rivers and creeks overflow.  Sometimes country roads become impassable.  Farmers lament their inability to get into the fields where there is standing water here and there and miry bogs everywhere else, and know that even if they could plant, the seed would rot in the saturated soil instead of germinating.  And all that water can breed mosquitoes almost overnight.
            So on a weekend when we had already measured over three inches of rain and a 90% chance of "heavy rain" was predicted for two more days, we were a little concerned.  We prayed hard for God to send us clear skies and no more rain.  That is exactly what He did.  The puddles dried fairly quickly, and the dark, wet ground is beginning to look like pale gray Florida sand again. 
            All of that made me think of the poor old weatherman.  For a week he had predicted heavy rains those two days, and he turned out wrong.  Was he wrong because his science was wrong?  No, he was wrong because he is not the one in control.  We make fun of him all the time—"He never gets it right"—which is probably not accurate in itself.  He does get it right fairly often.  But think of what he has going against him.  Think of all the Christians out there praying that he will be wrong, and a Heavenly Father who listens to His children and as often as possible, does what they ask.  The weatherman doesn't stand a chance.  That he gets anything right is a notable thing, and once again only due to a Father who has ordered the world to run in a certain way, on a certain timetable of seasons, fronts, and heat waves.
            Or do we believe that?  I think I have some brothers and sisters who don't.   Then why do you pray at all, may I ask?  Maybe we don't get what we ask for because we don't truly believe it is even possible to receive it.
            Who do you believe?  God or the poor, old weatherman?
 
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him (1John 5:14-15).
 
Dene Ward

“Hi!  My name is Moe and I will be your server today.  What can I get you to drink?”
            We had received a gift card to an Italian restaurant we had never been to before and were using it after a doctor appointment one afternoon.  Moe was slightly shorter than average, but a dark-haired, good looking young man, probably working his way through college, it being a college town.  We enjoyed our meal and Moe served us well.  Our first course came lickety-split and when the second took a little bit longer, he stopped to tell us we were “next” and to see if we needed anything else while we waited—like another loaf of warm bread, an offer we were happy to take him up on.  All through the meal he checked on our progress, on whether we were happy or not, and whether things were prepared to our liking.
            When we had finished and were sated enough to turn down dessert, he stood another moment and said, “Is there anything else I can get you?”  Then a half second later, “I really mean that.  You are the kindest table I have waited on all day and I would do anything in the world for you.”
            I had noticed that the booth behind Keith had called him over half a dozen times, and another table had sent something back.  No one raised a voice, but evidently their words and manner showed they might as well have. 
            And us?  We didn’t really think about what we were doing or how we were acting.  We were just—us.  Maybe it’s that we learned a long time ago that people in the service industry are often mistreated and verbally abused, made to pay for someone else’s failures—in this case, maybe the chef’s—and treated just like furniture as far as any personal interaction goes.  Maybe I learned it from my daddy—he always called people he dealt with by their names, and waiters and waitresses, car salesmen and mechanics all remembered him.
            But Moe’s words of gratitude have made me actually think about what I am doing and saying, trying to be even kinder than usual, and maybe even developing a short—but sweet—relationship with those people.  Isn’t that the way Christians are supposed to treat those who serve them?
            Masters, treat your servants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven…and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their Master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him. Col 4:1; Eph 6:9
            Why shouldn’t those passages apply to how we treat waiters and waitresses, plumbers and mechanics, cashiers and pizza delivery guys?  These people serve us as part of their daily work, and we can make or break their reputations with their bosses and even cost them their jobs.  We can also brighten their day if we treat them as we ought to, and who knows, maybe someday we can help bring them to Christ. 
            My boys have worked in service industries over summer semesters.  Even all these years later they can tell you stories about certain customers.  Do you really think it is Christlike to be a customer remembered for his sour disposition and rude words over twenty years later?
            Did you go out to eat yesterday?  How would your server remember you?  If you walked in again today, how would he feel?  How does your cashier at the grocery store greet you?  Does she ignore you unless you go through her line, or does she smile and wave when she sees you walk through the door? 
            So thank you, Moe, for reminding me that we are supposed to be reflections of our Lord to everyone.  Thank you for reminding me that my actions and attitudes can glorify or shame Him.
 
You shall not rule over [your servants] ruthlessly but shall fear your God. Lev 25:43
 
Dene Ward

At 6:03 pm CDT on May 31, 2013, a wedge tornado developed just south of El Reno, Oklahoma, and within a half hour grew to be the widest tornado ever measured at 2.6 miles across, with the damage swath spreading another mile further out.   The highest speeds recorded were 302 mph, and the fastest the storm traveled over land was 50 mph.  It dissipated at 6:42 pm CDT.  Eight people had been killed, all of them in vehicles, some trying to wait it out as it passed by, and three who were storm researchers whose white Chevy Cobalt was overtaken before they could get away.  I cannot even imagine being so close to a storm like that on purpose!  Once, about 40 years ago, we were closer than I ever want to be again, and it wasn't even that big.
          We awoke that Saturday morning to ominous gray skies and strong winds.  The forecast for the day made it dangerous to be out, so we called those we had invited for a singing that afternoon and canceled.  Instead of walking to the paper box, about a quarter mile down our driveway, Keith drove the car, and as huge, plopping raindrops began falling, parked it next to the front door when he returned so he would not get too wet.
            A few minutes later, he looked out the window by the table where he sat reading the paper and sipping a cup of coffee.  Something in his manner made me look too, but I didn’t see anything. 
            “Get the boys,” he said very quietly, “and go crouch down in the middle of the house.  Cover your faces.”  I did exactly as he said, unquestioningly.  He grew up in the Arkansas mountains, and he knew about things I had no experience with.  A few minutes later it was all over with.  What “all” was, I still did not realize.  The power had gone out, but we were still intact. 
            We stepped out of the house, and the hay barn across the field no longer had a roof.  Several water oaks and wild cherry trees were down on the long driveway to the highway.  A large chinaberry had fallen right where the car had originally been parked before he decided to drive for the paper instead of walking.  It would have been flattened if he had parked it there again.
            Then we edged around the corner of the house on our bedroom side, and saw the worst of it.  A huge live oak had split.  Half had fallen on the power lines, but the line was still alive, wiggling and sparking on the ground.  The other half, its roots mostly out of the ground, leaned right over our bedroom.  We had no idea how long it would hold before it too fell and demolished our house.
            We called the power company immediately and they rushed out to take care of the live wire, but they had too many other calls to send someone to handle the tilting tree.  We would have to wait our turn.  Word gradually spread down the highway, and within an hour, two men who worked timber drove up with cables and chainsaws, and those two men, who were complete strangers to us, took the tree down safely and with no damage.  We thanked them profusely.  “That’s what neighbors are for,” they said, and off they went.
            A preacher friend who had been invited to the sing never got the message to cancel.  He showed up amid the raucous roar of chainsaws, and heard the whole story.  It impressed him enough to include it in a lesson on prayer and providence.  The people in the audience were not impressed.  Afterward they took him aside and scolded him.  “God does not act in the world today,” they told him.  He was astounded, and so were we.
            When we become so intent on exposing false doctrine that we blatantly ignore the truth, swinging the pendulum so far back that we miss it entirely, something is wrong with our perspective.  If God had no hand in what happened that day, then why do we bother to pray at all?  Do we not believe James? 
            “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much,” 5:16. 
            Do we not believe the book of Esther or the last 14 chapters of Genesis?  “God sent me,” Joseph told his brothers who had thought it was all their idea, and God continued to “send” Joseph through Potiphar’s wife, the baker and butler, and eventually Pharaoh himself.
            God spent much of the prophets talking about how He would work through the enemies of Israel.  “Ho Assyrian! The rod of my anger!  The staff of my fury is in his hand,” Isa 10:5.  God sent those Assyrians to punish Israel, just as certainly as He sent those two lumberjacks to save my home.  He did it because of the prayers I started the moment I saw that look in my husband’s eye, the moment I crouched on the floor trying to shield my little boys with my own body, the moment we saw that tree clinging to the pitifully few clods of dirt left on its roots.
            I will never believe otherwise.  In fact, why do we bother if we don’t believe it?
 
The LORD is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. He fulfills the desire of those who fear him; he also hears their cry and saves them. Psalms 145:18-19
 
Dene Ward

Today's post is by guest writer Keith Ward.
 
Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go (Josh 1:9).
 
People have used this often lately for an encouragement. They are reading it as God commanding Joshua to be strong and courageous. Dare I suggest that this may not be the intent of the passage?
 
God had just commanded Joshua to go take the land of promise. So now he says that since HE commanded, Joshua should be strong and full of courage in fulfilling that command. He should not despair at the odds or be worried at his own limitations. God commanded it; therefore trust Him to see you through it.
 
Often we worry about the details. Robert Turner called it “Whittling on God’s end of the stick.” If God commanded it, we need to get busy and do it. We need not count the size of our treasury or despair at our inabilities. God commanded it. He will take care of the rest if we will just get off our duffs and DO IT!
 
 
  Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.  I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need.  I can do all things through him who strengthens me. Phil 4:11-13
 
Keith Ward