True Life Church

Just a Thought...

"Faith is to believe what we do not see, and the reward of this faith is to see what we believe."  Augustine "Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One who is leading."  Oswald Chambers "Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted in spite of your changing moods." C.S.Lewis "Without Christ, not one step; with Him, anywhere!" David Livingstone "If we cannot believe God when circumstances seem be against us, we do not believe Him at all."Charles Spurgeon "Relying on God has to begin all over again every day as if nothing yet had been done." C.S.Lewis "When you have no helpers, see your helpers in God. When you have many helpers, see God in all your helpers. When you have nothing but God, see all in God. When you have everything, see God in everything. Under all conditions, stay thy heart only on the Lord." Charles Spurgeon "God loves with a great love the man whose heart is bursting with a passion for the IMPOSSIBLE." William Booth"I have found that there are three stages in every great work of God: first, it is impossible, then it is difficult, then it is done." Hudson Taylor "Faith sees the invisible, believes the unbelievable, and receives the impossible." Boom Ten Corrie "Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God."  William Carey, "Faith, as Paul saw it, was a living, flaming thing leading to surrender and obedience to the commandments of Christ." A.W. Tozer   "What you do in your house is worth as much as if you did it up in heaven for our Lord God.  We should accustom ourselves to think of our position and work as sacred and well-pleasing to God, not on account of the position and work, but on account of the word and faith from which the obedience and the work flow.", Martin Luther

God and the Geese There was once a man who didn't believe in God, and he didn't hesitate to  let others know how he felt about religion and religious holidays.   His wife, however, did believe, and she raised their children to also have faith in God and Jesus, despite his disparaging comments. One snowy Eve, his wife was taking their children to service in the farm community in which they lived.  They were to talk about Jesus' birth.   She asked him to come, but he refused. "That story is nonsense!" he said.  "Why would God lower Himself to come to Earth as a man?  That's ridiculous!" So she and the children left, and he stayed home. A while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a  blizzard.  As the man looked out the window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm.  He sat down to relax before the fire for the evening.  Then he heard a loud thump.  Something had hit the window.  He looked out, but couldn't see more than a few feet.  When the snow let up a little, he ventured outside to see what could have been beating on his window. In the field near his house he saw a flock of wild geese.  Apparently they had been flying south for the winter when they got caught in the snowstorm and couldn't go on.  They were lost and stranded on his farm, with no food or shelter.  They just flapped their wings and flew around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly.  A couple of them had flown into his window, it seemed. The man felt sorry for the geese and wanted to help them.  The barn would be a great place for them to stay, he thought.  It's warm and safe; surely they could spend the night and wait out the storm.  So he walked  over to the barn and opened the doors wide, then watched and waited, hoping they would notice the open barn and go inside. But the geese just fluttered around aimlessly and didn't seem to notice the barn or realize what it could mean for them.  The man tried to get their attention, but that just seemed to scare them, and they moved further away.  He went into the house and came with some bread, broke it up, and made a bread crumb trail leading to the barn.  They still didn't catch on. Now he was getting frustrated.  He got behind them and tried to shoo them toward the barn, but they only got more scared and scattered in every direction except toward the barn.  Nothing he did could get them to go into the barn where they would be warm and safe.  "Why don't they follow me?!" he exclaimed.  "Can't they see this is the only place where they can survive the storm?" He thought for a moment and realized that they just wouldn't follow a human. "If only I were a goose, then I could save them," he said out loud.  Then he had an idea. He went into barn, got one of his own geese, and carried it in his arms as he circled around behind the flock of wild geese. He then released it. His goose flew through the flock and straight into the barn -- and one-by-one, the other geese followed it to safety.  He stood silently for a moment as the words he had spoken a few minutes earlier replayed in his mind:  "If only I were a goose, then I could save them!"  Then he thought about what he had said to his wife earlier.  "Why would God want to be like us?  That's ridiculous!" Suddenly it all made sense.  That is what God had done.  We were like the geese--blind, lost, perishing.  God had His Son become like us so He could show us the way and save us. As the winds and blinding snow died down, his soul became quiet and pondered this wonderful thought.  Suddenly he understood why Christ had come.  Years of doubt and disbelief vanished with the passing storm. He fell to his knees in the snow, and prayed his first prayer: "Thank You, God, for coming in human form to get me out of the storm!"