UNPROFITABLE ANGER

"Do not be quickly provoked in your spirit, for anger resides in the lap of fools." Ecclesiastes 7:9
Every day of our lives, we are placed in situations that engage us with other people, whether it is in the office, our homes, or in public places.
Do you recall the last time someone cut you off in traffic, or you were forced to wait in line because someone up front got held up? Perhaps your employer did something that was downright unfair. Anger can result from many circumstances.
A friend once told me that anger is like warning lights on the front of your car dashboard. They signal that there is something going on under the hood, and we should take a look to examine the source of the problem.
When we lose control of a circumstance that we have placed certain expectations on and those expectations do not result in our desired outcome, we are tempted to get angry. The source of this type of anger is both fear and protection of personal rights. You see, when we believe we have a right to something, we have not given the Lord permission to allow an outcome different from what we want. If an outcome is different from our expectations, this may stimulate fear.
For instance, if a vendor failed to deliver an important job on time due to something out of his control, you may respond out of anger. Please know that the source of your anger is the fear of what might happen to you or what this might say about your abilities to manage a project. You no longer are in control of the circumstance and this creates fear in you.
The next time you get angry, ask the Lord, what is the source of that anger? Did the Lord allow that failure to let you see what is "under your hood"?
God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind (see 2 Tim. 1:7). Give up your rights to expectations that God never gave you. You will find a new freedom in Christ you never knew you could have.
by Os Hillman

AllWorship.com

Destruction Invited

"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."1

Vernon Eaton, commenting on the book, Ways of the Ant, by John Crompton, writes: "A pleasure-mad society needs to take a lesson from the Sanguine ants and their affair with the Golden-Haired beetle."
"The ants' normal diet is plain, often to the point of austerity, but they love unusual and exotic tidbits and will go to any lengths to satisfy this craving. For example, the Golden-Haired beetle exudes from the base of its golden hairs some secretion which ants find irresistible. So it is allowed to do anything it likes, even lay its own eggs, which soon turn to grubs. So besotted and obsessed do the worker ants become that they feed the beetle with food intended for their own infants, and even with food reserved for the queen."
"Worse, much worse, they allow the beetle to kill their infants and eat them. They even kill their own infants themselves and feed them to this stranger. The beetle repays them with a generous allowance of the secretion they crave…. The end is not immediate. The colony may last two years more, but the end is certain."
"How like Satan is this picture. Promising the 'pleasures of sin' and then enslaving us with our own cravings. The 'dead-end' may not be obvious at first, but it is inevitable."
The good news is that while the end result of sin is eternal death, which is eternal separation from God the author of all love and life, the gift of God is both forgiveness and eternal life. Both are available for all who believe and ask. For help be sure to read "How to Be Sure You're a Real Christian" at: www.actsweb.org/aricles.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, help me always to remember that sin always has its consequences and that I will reap what I sow. And I thank you that you have provided an escape from sin's ultimate consequences—eternal death and separation from you—by giving Jesus to die in my place on the cross. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
1. Romans 6:23 (NIV).
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Acts International - Daily Inspiration

Cognitive Dissonance

"Timothy, my son, I give you this instruction in keeping with the prophecies once made about you, so that by following them you may fight the good fight, holding on to faith and a good conscience. Some have rejected these and so have shipwrecked their faith."1
Beliefs are remarkably powerful in that they are to our lives what a rudder is to a ship. That is, they control the direction and destiny of our lives. Furthermore, while we don't always live the life we profess, we always live the life we believe. Simply put, if I believe I am a failure, I will set myself up to fail. If I believe I am a successful person, I will succeed, and so on.
Another critical point to remember about beliefs is that while we may begin with healthy beliefs but if we fail to live up to them, we will experience cognitive dissonance; that is, mental disharmony that is caused by guilt. Because of this discomfort, the danger is that we may change our beliefs to match our lifestyle. And then, instead of living the life we believe, we end up unhappily believing the life we live—a dangerous and self-destructive path to follow.
The good news about beliefs is that we get to choose them. In so doing we choose the direction and destiny of our life. Thus we need to choose our beliefs carefully and base them on reality and not on that which is convenient, or on false teaching or faulty perceptions from the past. We need to base them on God's Word and his principles for successful daily living.
For some in difficult circumstances it may be difficult to believe in God and that he has a specific purpose for your life. Nevertheless, we still believe in God by choice as exemplified by a World War II prisoner of war who wrote on a cellar wall in Cologne, Germany: "I believe in the sun, even when it is not shining; I believe in love, even when I feel it not; I believe in God even when he is silent."
Another powerful thing about beliefs is that they determine not only the destiny of our present life, but also our relationship to God and our destiny for the life to come. God's Word, the Bible, says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son [Jesus Christ], that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life."2 Also, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved [for the life to come]."3 And again, "To all who received him [Christ], to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God."4
Remember, too, that beliefs are only wishes until we act on them!

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please give me the wisdom to choose my beliefs carefully—beliefs that are in harmony with your Word, the Bible. And give me the courage to always live in accordance with these beliefs and never change them to match a less than wholesome lifestyle. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus' name, amen."

1. Timothy 1:18-19 (NIV).

2. John 3:16 (NIV).

3. Acts 16:31 (NIV).

4. John 1:12 (NIV).
NOTE: Today's Daily Encounter is also adapted from "The Power of Belief" by Dick Innes at http://tinyurl.com/79peh.
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Acts International - Daily Inspiration

Service

"Then the man who had received the one talent came. 'Master,' he said, 'I knew that you are a hard man, harvesting where you have not sown and gathering where you have not scattered seed. So I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground. See, here is what belongs to you.'"1
"Sir Michael Costa, the celebrated conductor, was holding a rehearsal. As the mighty chorus rang out, accompanied by scores of instruments, the piccolo player—a tiny pint-sized flute—thinking perhaps that his contribution would not be missed amid so much music, stopped playing. Suddenly, the great leader stopped and cried out, 'Where's the piccolo?'
"The sound of that one small instrument was necessary to the harmony, and the Master Conductor missed it when it dropped out. The point? To the Conductor there are no insignificant instruments in an orchestra. Sometimes the smallest and seemingly least important one can make the greatest contribution and even if it doesn't seem to make that big a difference to the audience at large, the conductor knows it right away!
"In the church, in life and in God's work on earth the players and the instruments are diverse—different sizes, different shapes, different notes, different roles to play. But like the piccolo player in Sir Michael's orchestra, we often in our own sovereignty decide that our contribution is not significant. Our contribution couldn't possibly make a difference. And so we quit playing. Stop doing that which we've been given to do. We drop out. But the Conductor immediately notices."2 From our perspective your and my contribution may be small, but from God's viewpoint it is critical. So, whatever you do, don't bury your piccolo (talent) but put it to use in service for the Lord remembering that we serve God by serving people and doing it in Jesus' name.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, thank you for the gift/s you have given to me and for the part you have given me to play as you orchestrate your plan for the world in which I live. Help me to play my part diligently, faithfully, and to the best of my ability always for your glory and the benefit of others. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus' name, amen."

1. Matthew 25:24-25 (NIV).
2. Adapted from Richard Love, Sermon: "Blowing Your Horn," Memphis: Sermon Illustrations, 1999. Cited on www.eSermons.com.
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Acts International - Daily Inspirational

Commitment Contradiction Part I

"Anyone, then, who knows the good he ought to do and doesn't do it, sins."1

Have you ever noticed that God doesn't worry about being politically correct? Today's politically "correct" society has all sorts of fancy watered down names for sin. We call a lie a fib (or "I misspoke"), adultery an affair, abortion a viable means of birth control, homosexuality an alternate lifestyle, etc., etc. But God doesn't beat around the bush. Sin is sin is sin. To call poison by any other name would be deadly. To call sin by any other name is also deadly. If we do what we know is wrong, we sin. And if we know to do good, and don't do it, we sin.
While I would disagree with a Buddhist monk on many issues, I totally agree with his statement when he said, "To know and not to do is not yet to know."
To translate that into our Christian terminology it could be: "To believe and not to act is not yet to believe because I only truly believe that which motivates me to action." Thus the Buddhist monk was right on when he said, "To know and not to do is not yet to know."
If I say I am a follower of Christ and don't do anything to help the poor, feed the hungry, care for the downtrodden in my community and in other parts of the world, nor support missions and those spreading the gospel, then I am not a follower of Jesus regardless of what I say I am. What I say is meaningless unless it is backed by my actions.
Every one of us can do something to be "as Christ" to somebody. Even if we are bedridden, we can still communicate Christ's love to those who are ministering to us through a grateful and loving spirit, and we can pray for these nurses and doctors, and for those who are on the front line of action for Christ.
Thus, to know and not to do is not yet to know; or to believe and not to act is not yet to believe, for I only truly believe that which motivates me to action.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, please help me to be a 'doer' of your word and not just a 'talker.' And please help me always to be faithful in being 'as Christ' to every life I touch—ministering to people at their point of need and then communicating your love and the gospel message with those who are lost and need the Savior. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."
1. James 4:17 (NIV).
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Acts International - Daily Inspiration

HIDDEN TREASURES

A man was exploring caves by the seashore.
In one of the caves he found a canvas bag with a bunch of hardened clay balls. It was like someone had rolled clay balls and left them out in the sun to bake.
They didn't look like much, but they intrigued the man, so he took the bag out of the cave with him. As he strolled along the beach, he would throw the clay balls one at a time out into the ocean as far as he could.
He thought little about it, until he dropped one of the clay balls and it cracked open on a rock.
Inside was a beautiful precious stone.
Excited, the man started breaking open the remaining clay balls. Each contained a similar treasure.
He found thousands of dollars worth of jewels in the 20 or so clay balls he had left.
Then it struck him. He had been on the beach a long time. He had thrown maybe 50 or 60 of the clay balls with their hidden treasure into the ocean waves.
Instead of thousands of dollars in treasure, he could have taken home tens of thousands, but he had just thrown it away!
It's like that with people.
We look at someone, maybe even ourselves, and we see the external clay vessel.
It doesn't look like much from the outside.
It isn't always beautiful or sparkling, so we discount it.
We see that person as less important than someone more beautiful or stylish or well known or wealthy.
But we have not taken the time to find the treasure hidden inside that person.
There is a treasure in each and every one of us. If we take the time to get to know that person, and if we ask God to show us that person the way He sees them, then the clay begins to peel away and the brilliant gem begins to shine forth.
May we not come to the end of our lives and find out that we have thrown away a fortune in friendships because the gems were hidden in bits of clay.
May we see the people in our world as God sees them.
--Author Unknown

AllWorship.com

Making Your Life Count

"Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might."1

Everybody is good at something … even the person who said he was a good example of what not to do!
Seriously, what is it you like to do best? Even if it is only one talent, start putting it to good use today—right now. And then get the training you need to sharpen that talent and ask God how you can use it to serve him and help others so you can make your life count for something worthwhile.
Don't wait for opportunities to fall into your lap—they may or may not come. Make your own opportunities. If you find a need, meet it. If you find a hurt, heal it.
With God's help you, too, can make your life count for something truly worthwhile for time and eternity.

Suggested prayer: "Dear God, again today I commit and trust my life and way to you. What can I do for you today? I'm available; please use me to help a wounded soul along the way, to bring a smile to a saddened heart, to give comfort to a lonely child, encouragement to a struggling teen, a sandwich to a hungry man. Whatever it is, please use me today to be 'as Christ' to every life I touch. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus' name, amen."

1. Ecclesiastes 9:10 (NIV).

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Acts International - Daily Inspiration