Control

November 19, 2024November 2, 2024 / Mark Brady / Leave a comment

Accepting God’s gift of salvation is easy. “Even a caveman can do it.” (A line from a famous commercial some years ago.) What’s not so simple is giving God control of your life. It seems a lot of people still want to make significant decisions on their own. Then, when they find themselves in trouble, they wonder why.

After graduating college and landing a drafting job with the local electric company, I felt I was set for life. After all, as I was starting my career there, my uncle retired from the same company. But God had other plans. I was offered a youth pastor’s position in a small church 1,582 miles away. The problem? They couldn’t afford to pay me. Crazy right? Who in their right mind would take such a position? Believe me, I heard a lot of opinions from others who I knew were concerned for me. My father’s thoughts were the loudest, though.

After a lot of prayer, I did what God called me to. I was scared, but I felt assured that He knew what He was doing. It turns out He did, and all of my needs were met.

That experience taught me to seek God whenever making decisions about things like where to live, where to work, and where to spend money above and beyond living costs. Oh, don’t forget who to marry. These are the areas of life that most don’t even think to ask God about. Somehow, they feel these decisions are theirs. And some go as far as to tell God, “Hands off!”

Of course, God allows this because He gives us free will. But I can only wonder how much it aches his heart when the decisions people make hurt them. God wants the best for us, and He has the ability to see beyond the edge of the map. He knows in advance what decisions are good ones and which ones aren’t.

I would have to say that letting God have complete control of my life has allowed me to have a wonderful life and one of the most incredible adventures anyone could ever live.

It’s in Christ that we find out who we are and what we are living for. Long before we first heard of Christ and got our hopes up, he had his eye on us, had designs on us for glorious living, part of the overall purpose he is working out in everything and everyone. Eph. 1:11-12 (MSG)

Trust God from the bottom of your heart;
    don’t try to figure out everything on your own.
Listen for God’s voice in everything you do, everywhere you go;
    he’s the one who will keep you on track.
Don’t assume that you know it all.
    Run to God! Run from evil!
Your body will glow with health,
    your very bones will vibrate with life!
Honor God with everything you own;
    give him the first and the best.
Your barns will burst,
    your wine vats will brim over.
But don’t, dear friend, resent God’s discipline;
    don’t sulk under his loving correction.
It’s the child he loves that God corrects;
    a father’s delight is behind all this. Prov. 3:5-12 (MSG)

Cease striving and know that I am God; Ps. 46:10a (LSB)

Why Do You Let Your Emotions Take Over?

April 6, 2021April 5, 2021 / Mark Brady / Leave a comment

The title to this blog is a good question. One asked by Job’s friend, Eliphaz in Job 15 from the Bible. The reason we do is because it’s natural. We instinctually go there first, to our emotions that is. Expressing one’s emotion has gotten so popular these days we can even respond by sending an “emoji”. Of course, not all emotions are harmful, and not all are based in fear.

I remember a time when I got extremely mad and hurt from my father. On the way home, from that encounter, I ordered a pizza. I dropped it onto the asphalt on the way to my car due to high winds. I had to go back inside and order another one.

When I finally got home and was eating it, God whispered, “Why didn’t you turn to me first?”

OUCH!

I thought about it and answered, “Because you weren’t my first thought, God.”

That’s probably why we turn to our emotions first and allow them, or empower them to take over us. We have not yet trained ourselves to think of God first, and allow him to help us react to life in a peaceful manner. Or to respond to a person and or situation with one of the fruits of the Spirit. Can you imagine how much better life would be, or go if we could retrain our minds? It is possible! While in the midst of the process of getting my wife’s immigration to America completed I got depressed, and instead of turning to food, and allowing my emotions to rule, I prayed.

A key to learning to change our behavior is asking God for help to do so. I had to do this as well. God loves us so much and doesn’t want to see us get bogged down because we allow our emotions to rule us. So the next time something happens that “gets your dandruff up”, or raises a red flag, stop, and ask God to help you. I know you will be glad you did.

Stella, This Ain’t Hollywood

August 21, 2019August 20, 2019 / Mark Brady / 2 Comments

20170921_092347 I watched a good movie the other night. I won’t say which one, because I am going to give away the ending, and I don’t believe in “spoiler alerts!” The movie was about a father and a son, and their relationship. At the end of the movie the two were out fishing, and the father finally said some words his son had waited a very long time to hear, and then the father died. I lost it. Tears all over the couch. It was a real mess that even challenged “Bounty”, the quicker picker upper!

The truth is, the last few months my father was alive was difficult. He was acting out of fear and it hurt. I saw one of my father’s old friends last week, and he told me my father started fearing me controlling his life before I ever moved back to my home town after retirement to assist him as he wanted and needed. So by the time I had gotten here, my father had it in his mind how life would go, but it didn’t, and he refused to accept it, because it wasn’t the reality he had built up in his mind. I’m so glad though, four days before my father passed, we had a nice, peaceful, fun conversation.

Why am I sharing this? To vindicate myself? No. I know in my heart and before God how I treated my father, but the point is, I wanted my father’s last days to be his best days. I dreamed of my father and I out fishing. Having a nice day. Lots of laughs, and because he loved to fish, dad finally catching his trophy fish. Me, snapping a picture, and dad releasing the fish back into the lake, and then passing on, similar to the movie I mentioned above. But this ain’t Hollywood, and life doesn’t go like the well scripted, command performance acting, as in the movies.

So when life doesn’t go as scripted, what do we do? We give it to God, and we do everything to love the other people in the scene as best as we can. Love endures, remembers no wrong, and writes a great ending because love, always wins. (Love – 1 Cor. 13)

(The title of this post came from the Christian rock group, DeGarmo & Key, from 1980)

Enough?

February 23, 2019February 22, 2019 / Mark Brady / Leave a comment

charlie 3 When is enough, enough? Have you had it with an individual, or a workplace? What about a country? You scream so loud on the inside you’re surprised that dogs don’t howl! Why do people, work rules, or a countries procedures have to be ridiculous? If they made sense, or had a justifiable reason behind them, then fine, so be it. For someone to say, “But that’s the rule,” or “that’s the way it is,” over and over doesn’t help either. It hurts, beating your head against the wall repeatedly, trying to find a sliver of logic to it all when the truth is, there is none!

I imagine there will come a day, when God says to his Son, “Enough.” God is patient, and long suffering, but He too can only take so much. He did it in the days of Noah, and with Sodom and Gomorrah. Jesus will know what his Father is saying is, “Go, and bring my people home. Deliver them from the sin, the injustices, from the insanity, from those who “think” they are in control, the hypocritical, from those that oppress, and from the work of the evil one.” Jesus will stand up and make his way to earth, and the trumpet will sound.

“But be on your guard. Don’t let the sharp edge of your expectation get dulled by parties and drinking and shopping. Otherwise, that Day is going to take you by complete surprise, spring on you suddenly like a trap, for it’s going to come on everyone, everywhere, at once. So, whatever you do, don’t go to sleep at the switch. Pray constantly that you will have the strength and wits to make it through everything that’s coming and end up on your feet before the Son of Man.” (Luke 21:34-36 MSG)

Be encouraged. The way this world is going where right is wrong, and wrong has become right, it won’t be long before God will say, “Enough!”