If The Lord Wills

by Ronnie Hewitt

 

“Now listen, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.’ Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. Instead, you ought to say, ‘If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this or that.’” (Jas 4:13-15)

 

A New Year always affords us the opportunity to feel as if we can start afresh. As we make plans for our lives, it is important that we remember to never, never, never leave God out of our life’s plans. Life’s plans sometimes collapse against the uncertainty of the future. We do not know what tomorrow may bring, and to foolishly pretend that we are in control of the direction our lives will take is courting disaster. We are only in control of the responses we make to events, but very often not in control of the events themselves.


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The Value Is The Owner

by Alan Smith, Timely Truths
 
What value do you place in yourself?
 
The story is told of an American tourist in Paris who picked up an amber necklace in a trinket shop.* When he arrived at New York and went through customs he was shocked at the high duty he had to pay for the necklace. So, when he came home, he spoke with a jeweler and the jeweler told him he would give $25,000 for the necklace. The man was stunned and suspected that there was a reason for the offer. So, he took the necklace to an expert who appraised it at an astronomical amount.
 
When he asked the appraiser, what made the necklace so valuable, he told him to look into the magnifying glass and see for himself. When he placed his eye next to the glass, he saw an inscription which read: “From Napoleon to Josephine.” It was the name on the necklace that gave it extraordinary worth.

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His Own Did Not Receive Him

Phil Ware, Heartlight.org
 
“He came to that which was His own, but his own did not receive Him. — (John 1:11)
 
Thought
 
Jesus came to his own things — the world he had created and the land he had promised his people — and his very own people didn’t receive him. Sometimes we are blinded by our desires and dreams for Jesus and we really miss what he wants for us and from us. Let’s not let the following be true in our lives.

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