Just a pondering thought....

A freind of mine sent an email the other day that had a line in it that I thought was rather profound. Going to church no more makes you a christian than standing in your garage makes you a car. Tha really hit me this time. I had seen the email before, it was one of those fowards, but that line had never really jumped out at me. How many people do you know, maybe you are one of them, that thinks the christian life is all about going to church? The christian life is more about what you do, how you act, how you react the other six days of the week. I an not saying that going to church is not important, because it is important. We just need to take what we learn in church and apply it to our every waking moment.
I have a great example. The past eight days at work have been real challenging. We have had major technical issues within the store, personel issues, and an over whelming work load. In our Thursday morning bible study we started studying James three weeks ago. What is the first couple of verses of James? (This is the Whybrew paraphrase), Consider it PURE JOY when faced with trials of all kinds. One of the things that I had gotten out of our discussion was that this was a concious choice to consider it joy. So this afternoon when we have had one of the most challenging 8 day periods in awhile, was I overwelmed with joy? I really got broadsided with that one, and had to repent of my attitude. After that my day went a little better.
I guess what I am saying here is if we understand who is really in charge, and submit to that, our lives will be better. I am not saying that we won't have challenges and hardships, we will just relize that we have someone to lean on that has our total best interests at heart, and he will not give us more than we can bear, and that we should consider it pure joy, because he is molding and shaping us to become more like him.
Getting back to my original thought, Rick had a really great message last night about holding on to our things with open hands. Everything we have is God's, and he just allows us to be stewards of it for a while. So we need to be willing to sacrifice every thing we have to God. All our money, all our stuff (take a mission trip to a third world country, or just go spend a couple of days helping out in the huricane or tornado ravished areas of our country, to realize how much stuff we really have), all of ourselves we must be willing to sacrifice to God. You may think, hey he sounds like he has got it all figured out, I don't. I am still hanging on to way to many things with closed hands.