Some time ago (August 2001), I received an e-mail from a friend which gave Sandy and me both a good laugh. It contained a poem, entitled A Poem for Computer Users over 30. I thought you might enjoy it.
A COMPUTER was something on TV
From a science fiction show of note
A WINDOW was something you hated to clean
And RAM was the cousin of a goat.
MEG was the name of my girlfriend
And GIG was a job for the nights
Now they all mean different things
And that really MEGA BYTES.
An APPLICATION was for employment
A PROGRAM was a TV show
A CURSOR used profanity
A KEYBOARD was a piano.
LOG ON was adding wood to the fire
HARD DRIVE was a long trip on the road
A MOUSE PAD was where a mouse lived
And BACKUP happened to your commode.
CUT you did with a pocket knife
And PASTE you did with glue
A WEB was a spider's home
And a VIRUS was a flu.
I guess I'll stick to my pad and paper
And the MEMORY in my head
I hear nobody's been killed in a COMPUTER CRASH
But when it happens they wish they were dead. (forwarded by Gabe Combs)
My, how things have changed in just a few short years, but that's life! Life is full of changes. Our vocabulary is changing. Every cell in your body is changing! People change jobs, and churches change pastors. Life is full of change.
The problem is very few people like change. Mark Twain put it well when he said, "The only person who likes change is a wet baby."
The question is: How do we handle the change? How do we manage the change so as to end up better off? How do we make change our friend?
Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Genesis 12, Genesis 12, where we have the story of a man about to make a big change in his life.
Genesis 12:1-3 The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”
Now, this is commonly called the Abrahamic Covenant. It is God's promise to Abraham of land, seed, and blessing, which forms the foundation for the rest of the Old Testament.
It's a very important promise, but I want you to notice the two imperatives contained in this promise. There are two commands that activated the promise and changed the entire course of human history. They are two commands, which helped Abraham face that change, and I believe will help us face the changes ahead of us today.
The first command is found in verse 1, where God tells Abraham, "Leave your country." It's the call of God to…
GO FORTH!
Leave the known. Leave the familiar for the unknown and the unfamiliar. That's exactly what god told Abraham to do (vs.1). Go forth from your country -- leave its wealth and affluence. Go forth from your relatives -- leave the people you know and love. Go forth from your father's house -- leave even your own family! "Leave it all for a land I will show you," God said. "Leave the known. Leave the familiar for the unknown and the unfamiliar," and Abraham did it!
Genesis 12:4-9 So Abram left, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord. Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev. (NIV)
Even though he was 75 years old at the time, Abraham left the familiar for the unfamiliar, and that's what God calls us to do sometimes. Matthew Henry put it this way: "Our country is dear to us, our kindred dearer, and our father's house dearest of all, and yet they all must be hated."
Jesus Himself said: "If anyone comes to me, and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple."
Does that mean we have to show animosity toward our families? NO! It just means that when Jesus says "GO!" we must be willing to get up and go, even if it means leaving our families, even if it means leaving those that are near and dear to us.
An old farmer was fishing in a tub of water in his back yard. His neighbor saw it and chided him. "Man, there ain't no fish in that tub. Why are you wasting your time like that?"
"Yeah," came the reply. "I know there ain't no fish in here, but it's just so powerful convenient."
Sometimes God calls us out of our comfortable, convenient spots. And when the call comes we must go! God is calling you to go forward with a new pastor. God is calling me to go forward with a new ministry. God is calling us both to go – not to reduce our effectiveness in ministry, but to make us even more effective than we ever dreamed possible.
From time to time, lobsters have to leave their shells in order to grow. They need the shell to protect them from being torn apart, yet when they grow, the old shell must be abandoned. If they did not abandon it, the old shell would soon become their prison -- and finally their coffin.
The tricky part for the lobster is the brief period of time between when the old shell is discarded and the new one is formed. During that terribly vulnerable period, the transition must be scary to the lobster. The currents push them along. Hungry fish are ready to devour them, and for awhile at least, that old shell must look pretty good. (Brent Mitchell, Fresh Illustrations for Preaching & Teaching; BI# 849-852; 7/1998.1666)
So it is with us. To change and grow, we must sometimes leave our shells. We must sometimes leave the known and the familiar, and that's scary. But that's what following Jesus is all about. When he says "GO," we go. We leave our "shells" behind. We change. We risk. We grow.
How do we make change our friend? How do we handle it so as to be better off in the end? Well first, when God says "GO," we go. We go forward into the future with a holy boldness, confident that God will work it all out. "Go forth," God says. And then #2…
BE A BLESSING.
Don't go grumbling and complaining. Instead, go enriching the lives of others. Go sharing the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's what god called Abraham to do. God said to Abraham, "Go forth from your country…"
Genesis 12:2 “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. (NIV)
Or better, "And so BE A BLESSING." It's an imperative in the Hebrew, the 2nd command we have in these verses. God promised Abraham tremendous blessings, and God fulfilled His promise to Abraham. God made him into a great nation and gave him a great name, just like He said He would.
Now, why did God so richly bless this man? So he could keep it all to himself? NO! God so richly blessed Abraham, so that Abraham could in turn be a blessing to others.
God never blesses His people so they can hoard it all for themselves. Rather, God wants us to be channels of His blessing to others. Just like Abraham, God calls us to share his blessing, to bless others with the blessings He has given us.
At age 12, Robert Louis Stevenson was looking out into the dark from his upstairs window. He was watching a man light the streetlamps. Stevenson's governess came into the room and asked what he was doing. He replied, "I am watching a man cut holes in the darkness." (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, pp. 178-179)
Do you know, that's exactly what God calls us to do? He calls us to cut holes in the spiritual darkness of our world.
David Faust, in Faith Under Fire, talks about waking up one morning to the familiar sound of the 6:00 news. That day it was particularly depressing. A woman had shot her boyfriend, a man admitted poisoning his wife, political campaigns were growing more negative. Jim Scott, the usually upbeat deejay, said, "Won't somebody call in with some good news?"
As he lay there in bed, still half asleep, David thought, "That's a 50,000-watt station. Somebody needs to grab this chance to say something positive for Christ!" Then it struck him: "I am somebody. So he dialed the number, and a few minutes later, Jim Scott put him on the air.
Thinking quickly, David told how his church had recently purchased an old church building in a center-city neighborhood. He shared his excitement about how university students and community residents were pooling their resources and working hard to refurbish an old building to use as a place of worship and an activity center for youth. After a few minutes, the deejay thanked David for calling, and he hung up.
David said, "Standing there in my bathrobe, I laughed out loud as I thought, 'I must be dreaming! I think I just spoke on the radio to hundreds of thousands of people!'" (David Faust, Faith Under Fire, 1997)
Isn't that wonderful? In the midst of all the bad news, David Faust chose to share some good news. He chose to be a blessing. And you and I can do the same thing! In our conversations, we can add to the doom and gloom, or we can be a blessing. I hope you choose to be a blessing, because that's what God wants us to be.
When Dr. William Carey came to the end of his ministry, he said to those he served, "When I am gone, say nothing about Dr. Carey, speak about Dr. Carey's Savior." (William Carey in "The Life of William Carey," Christianity Today, Vol. 35, no. 12)
Do you know, that's one way to be a blessing? When I'm gone, say nothing about Phil Green. Don't plague the next pastor with, "But Pastor Phil never did it that way." Instead, speak about Phil Green's Savior – and yours! When God told Abraham, "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed," He was thinking of Jesus Christ (Galatians 3:8,16).
You see, God had planned to bless the world through Abraham's seed, through a descendant of Abraham, and that descendant was Christ. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Son of Abraham, and the Son of David, came into this world to die on a cross for our sins. Three days later he rose again, and now he offers eternal life to anyone who believes in Him. Jesus Christ is the source of every blessing, and it is only in Him that people find life!
It's not in you or me. It's not in our charm, our personality, or in our gifts and abilities. It's not even in our good looks. Only Jesus Christ can meet a person's real need and give him or her an eternal and abundant life. So if we're going to be a blessing to others, more than anything, we must share Christ with them. Speak only of Christ, not of any other man.
Evangelist D.L. Moody used to tell about a picture that impressed him greatly. It portrayed a woman grasping a cross with both hands as she was being rescued from a stormy sea.
Mr. Moody would then go on to relate how that picture lost much of its impact for him when he saw another painting some time later. The second picture also depicted a woman being rescued from raging waters. But while clinging with one hand to a cross, her other hand was lifting another person out of the waves to safety.
That's what salvation is all about. It is God saving us, so we can be involved in saving others, in reaching out to others who are lost and perishing like we were.
Several years, when I was leading a class on personal evangelism, I asked God to bring an unbeliever into my life. I had asked the class to pray for five unbelieving friends, and I didn't have any.
Well, God brought Scott Behnke into my life. Actually, his cousin Ed invited him to church, and soon after Scott came to know the Lord. Then Scott brought Cindy to church and she came to know the Lord. She later became his wife.
And when I left that church,Scott had passed away, but Cindy joined the Christian Motorcycle Association and became a vibrant witness to other bikers. Isn't that exciting?
As I look at nearly 28 years of ministry, that kind of thing brings me the most joy, because that's what it's all about. Life and ministry are about passing the blessing on. They're about sharing the salvation that God so richly gave to us.
In Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft, Thor Heyerdahl tells how he and a crew of five crossed the Pacific Ocean from South America to the South Pacific Islands on a crude raft of balsa logs bound together with hemp rope. uring the three-month journey in 1947, they had little control of the direction of the raft and no way to stop its forward progress. They learned early in the voyage that anything dropped overboard was almost impossible to recover once it passed behind the raft.
Two months into the voyage and thousands of miles from land, Herman Watzinger lost his footing and went overboard. The raft, driven by a strong wind in heavy seas, moved ahead faster than he could swim. The five remaining men were horrified for their friend. They tried to throw him a life belt on a rope, but the wind blew it back at them. In seconds, Herman was all but lost to their sight in the tumble of waves.
Suddenly Knute Haugland grabbed the life belt and dove into the water. He swam back to Herman and wrapped his arm around him, holding his exhausted friend and the rope while the men on the boat drew them back to the boat. (David Denny, Leadership, Vol. 19, no. 3)
Tell me, Do you want to make change your friend? Do you want to manage it so as to be even more effective for the Kingdom? Then Go forth -- Jump in the water. And be a blessing -- Take the Life Belt of Jesus Christ to those who are perishing. Sure it will take some risk, but that risk will be well worth the effort as God continues to use you to bring people to Himself.
