Doubt

I have doubts…

I doubt I am doing enough for the Kingdom.

I doubt I understand the Gospel correctly or completely,

I doubt I really feel the way I feel about Jesus.

I doubt I am good enough for God to save me.

I doubt my sincerity when I do what I know is right.

I doubt I do much that is pleasing to God.

I doubt God is willing to forgive me.

I doubt God.  I must.  Otherwise why do I feel my life is spinning out of control?

I doubt this was worth writing.

I do believe; help my unbelief.  Mark 9:24 NASB

Today’s Struggle

I struggle with this life.   If we are honest, I believe we admit that we all do.  There are days that I call good days, but they appear to be only those days when I convince myself to ignore the bad that exists in those days.  Why cannot I conquer the evil that lives within me?  Why can’t I enjoy the occasional victory – rest on my laurels a while?

 

I have a book, The Christian in Complete Armour, by William Gurnall, who says it best (somewhat paraphrased, but found on page 133 of Volume 1):

You are a wrestler, not a conquerer. Take comfort in the fact that you are a wrestler. Christ is the Conquerer, and upon our death, Christ will strike the winning blow.

 

Gurnall further states that as we wrestle, there will be days when we gain ground, and days when we lose ground.  Every day, however, we get up and enter the battle afresh, for our Lord and Savior’s Glory.  Gurnall wrote these words in 1655 AD.

 

Ecclesiastes 1:9 says

What has been will be again,
       what has been done will be done again;
       there is nothing new under the sun.”

 

Today seems to be a day of losing ground.  A dear friend, trying to get pregnant, found out today that she is not. Another dear friend, with a wife and three children, was told his services are no longer required in our company.  A record sales month on my team was reduced to a dismal sales month by an accounting technicality.

 

It’s not at all fair.  Nothing anyone says will convince me that any of this is fair. 

 

However, God is on His throne.  This I know.  As I wrestle with myself, with my sin nature, I cling to this fact.  My Lord sits at His Right Hand.  God knows what is happening, and God is fully capable of using it to His Glory.  That is, after all, our highest calling, to bring Glory to God. 

 

I will make peace with the day.  It will take me a while, but not nearly as long a while as it used to.  Praise God!  Bring Glory to Yourself through all of this! Amen!

 

- Cliff

Oops!

I have read many times about a careless woodworker who used a pneumatic nail gun to attach themselves to their work.  I have thought, on probably every occasion that these individuals were pretty dumb.  I have also thought that the experience had to be pretty darned painful.

 

Yesterday, I joined their ranks.  Okay, maybe I am only an honorary member.  I was building a router table so I could begin building the doors to my travel trailer.  I was holding one piece of wood while nailing the second piece to it with a pneumatic nail gun loaded with 1-1/2” finish nails.  Unfortunately, I missed the piece of wood I was holding.  My middle finger was at the edge of the piece of wood, and compressed by my holding pressure so it wrapped around the wood slightly.  The nail penetrated the first piece of wood, traveled through the air where piece number two should have been, and entered my middle finger right at the tip.  Luckily, my finger was at the end of the nails trajectory, so rather than come out the other side, it just dented the underside of my fingernail.

 

I try to learn from my mistakes, so what did I learn from this one?

 

1.                  Keep my hands well away from the suspected travel path of the business end of any tool, especially a power tool.

2.                  A nail in the finger doesn’t hurt nearly as much as one would think. 

3.                  I forgot to pray before I began work yesterday.

4.                  Fatigue sets in rapidly at 114º.

 

My first impulse, before I knew how bad it was, was to get Gina. In the 10 seconds it took to get to her, I knew it wasn’t that bad.  I was frightened enough, though, to have had a momentary wave of nausea pass over me.  Gina helped me clean my finger, put peroxide on it, and put a band-aid or two on it.  Then I went back out and finished the router table, and quit for the day.

 

Later, while saying grace over dinner, I finally remembered to thank God for protecting me from what could have been a much greater injury. That was the dumbest part of the whole day.

 

If you read this, please say a prayer for Garland, who is undergoing surgery today to repair his wrist broken a couple weeks ago in a quad accident. 

 

- Cliff