For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Psalm 30:5
After a long layoff, I was finally getting called back to work. I had spent a lot of my free time trying to rearrange things, had made some new commitments, found some new friends. I desperately needed income and I had been scheduled for the over night shift at the strip mill. When the time came to report for work, I was overwhelmed with details of life and missed showing up. I frantically looked for a phone number to report my absence but found none. My whole life was falling apart, and a sense of dread powered over my mind and heart. And then it happened: I woke up from the dream.
I hadn’t worked in that steel mill for 42 years but for one long night I agonized over missing my recall date. I remember feeling like I was going down, torn between my love for leisure and my must-have income. I had hated life at this juncture, hated the overwhelming toughness of its challenge, fearing utter failure. When I awoke, the feelings all remained with me for a long while. Then, I recovered my bearings, threw off the faulty emotions, returned to my bedroom in 2024.
Regardless, I noticed that returning to “normalcy” was still inadequate. I realized I must also repenetrate and join my new-born and saved reality. I must rediscover myself in the safety net of God’s salvation and grace. I must find again peace and rest for my soul, love in my heart — the words of eternal life. I groped for a “third” reality, one and two cut not the muster.
Amazing the possibilities for a soul! For many years, I knew two realities. First, the reality of a messed up fallen world of a constant battle with a losing life. A general negativity characterized this mode of life. The other existence was having my act together, so to speak. This is when I was more positive and had some vision for my future . But these two actualities also we’re complicated by yet another, a third phenomena produced by substance abuse. This entity was a makeshift one, designed to escape the terrible impossibility of trying to balance the first two.
Folks today resort to numerous possibilities for alternate realities. Money lust , power lust, sexual lust , or intellectual prowess , all lead to these substitute worlds . What these deceptions have in common is they all circumvent the struggle of life. They all produce a philosophy which enables a person to skirt the real, which consists in having a sin nature and incompetence at best to produce a life of true peace, joy and harmony.
The Bible teaches that “the way of a man is not in himself. It is not in a man that walks to direct his steps.” Jeremiah 10:23
Proverbs 16:25 teaches us “There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death.”
This is the awful plight of a man without God.
There is good news. Deliverance awaits and is very possible. However, it requires of the heart. Luke 12:34
“For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
“” My son, give me thine heart, and let thine eyes observe my ways. ” v 26
Pro verbs 23:23 speaks emphatically, “Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding.
Proverbs 2:4-5 exhorts “If thou seek her as silver, and search for her as for hid treasures; ” Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God. “
Psalm 19:10 “More to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb.”
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.”Matthew13:44
Beloved, with all of our heart, with all of our heart. Buy that field, sell it not. Love ya
