source: http://www.jokes4us.com/miscellaneousjokes/weatherjokes/falljokes.html
Why does Humpty Dumpty love autumn? Because he had a great fall!
Why are trees very forgiving? Because in fall they “let it go” and in the spring, they “turn over a new leaf.”
Fall is a time of transition. There are so many changes that happen, both in nature and in our lives.
In fall, we get to see God’s handiwork put on display in a more magnificent way than I believe in any other time of the year, with maybe the single exception of spring when flowers are blooming for the first time.
Over the past few weeks we have been looking at lessons we can learn from this time of year.
We have been encouraged, like the colorful leaves of fall, to let our true selves show through for all to see as a testimony to our amazing Creator above.
In the season of fall, amid the changing colors of leaves, and the changing weather, we can often find an evergreen tree standing strong. Just like that tree, enduring through the changing seasons and temperatures, God is a fixed, unchanging stronghold for us in our world of constant change and fluctuation.
Last week, we learned that we need balance in our lives, just like the autumn equinox provides the same number of hours of daylight and night.
We can learn from the animals of fall, like the squirrels. They spend the season gathering and preparing for the harsh, cold, unforgiving winter. We too should make sure that we are storing up the right things at the right time in the right place — for where our treasure is, there our heart is also.
We have to make sure we always delight in the details around us. Stop and smell the roses, notice the colors of the leaves, observe God at work all around us.
From the celebrations of fall, we learned that we need to measure our successes. We also need to stop and be thankful for God’s successes in our lives. From these, we draw hope and strength for the future ahead.
Today, it has been said that autumn shows us how beautiful it is to let things go.
Tommy and Eddie from the skit guys gives us this morning the skinny, the true secret, on The baggage which we need to let go.
Video Ill.: The Skinny on Hurts, Habits, and Hang-Ups (The Skit Guys)
The hurts, the habits, and the hangups — the baggage that we carry with us every single day.
Just as the leaves fall to the ground in autumn, this season invites us on a journey of releasing the extra weight we are dragging around in our lives — The hurts, the habits, and the hangups that are doing nothing more than keeping us mentally, emotionally, and spiritually chained and bound.
Let’s take a few moments this morning to look at the hurts, the habits, and the hang-ups. Let’s learn about letting it go, and I don’t mean the song from Frozen.
Let’s start with the hurts.
Hurts cut deep.
Hurts take time to heal.
Often, though, like a kid, instead of letting our wounds heal, we keep picking at the scab, keeping the wound festering and bleeding. As we keep picking at it, it never heals over. We are left with an open wound, out there reminding us of the incident that initially caused our pain.
I know we’ve been hurt. We’ve all been hurt.
Take a moment and ask ourselves who has hurt us?
What did they do that hurt us?
How long has it been?
I guarantee you can answer those questions in a heartbeat.
The anger — the hate — the indignation — the disappointment — the frustration — The embarrassment — it’s right there just under the surface, just waiting for someone to ask so we can rehash the story again.
“One day, I will get my revenge for what they did to me. I hate them,” we say.
“One day, I will set it all straight.”
One day.
But that day never comes.
And we end up living a life of regret — regret for all of the things we could have done but didn’t because we were so preoccupied with the hurt and pain.
Here’s the thing about all of this: the people who hurt us probably don’t even know or even care about the hurt they’ve caused us.
And as quickly as we can rehash the story of our pain, they have just as quickly moved on in their lives, leaving us alone to re-live the incident, the situation, the pain over and over again by ourselves.
Author C. JoyBell C. wrote, “If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him or her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate.”
These hurts — these pains — if left untended, will eventually cause some serious infection. Our open wounds can really cause us to do some really crazy things.
Revenge Is Sweet
By Sermon Central
From a sermon by Nathan Ingram, The Lesson of Meekness, 11/30/2009
Copied from Sermon Central
The story is told that from 2003-2005, a number of former teachers and school administrators in New York reported a rash of vandalism at their homes. They would wake up to punctured car tires from roofing nails scattered across their driveways. There would be paint splattered across their garage doors and mailboxes. Some victims complained of being hit every two weeks.
It went on for nearly two years until perpetrator was caught. They figured it was just kids playing pranks, but it turned out that the vandal wasn’t a rebellious student, but a former co-worker.
72 year old Thomas Haberbush was still angry about the poor performance reviews he had received in 1977, when he was dismissed as teacher. The police investigator reported, “I’ve never seen anyone carry around a grudge like that for 30 years.… It’s bizarre.”
Maybe you heard about the man who went to his doctor after he was bitten by a stray dog.
The doctor comes in and says, “Yes indeed, you do have rabies.”
As soon as the man heard that, he got out pen and paper, and began making a list of people.
The doctor told his patient, “There’s no need to call all those people. You’re not going to die. There is a cure for rabies.”
The man responded, “Oh, I know that. I’m just making a list of all the people I’m gonna bite.”
There was a story about a woman who was in a department store checking out one time. As she opened her purse to get her wallet, the sales clerk noticed a TV remote inside. “Need batteries?” she asked.
“Oh no,” the woman said. “My husband wouldn’t come shopping with me today because he’s trying to watch two football games at once. So I figured that taking the remote while he wasn’t looking was the most evil thing I could do to him legally.”
There’s a better way, according to Paul. In Ephesians 4, in a passage about how we should be living our lives, he writes:
31 Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. 32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you. (Ephesians 4, NLT)
I know. Much easier to say than to do.
Especially when that other person keeps hurting us over and over. How many times do we have to forgive?
21 … Peter came to [Jesus] and asked [Him the same question], “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”
22 “No, not seven times,” Jesus replied, “but seventy times seven!” (Matthew 18, NLT)
The rabbis taught in Jesus’ time that you were required to forgive three times based on an old testament passage in the book of Amos.
Peter was being generous by suggesting seven times. Three times two and add one for good measure. Sounds like a pretty good suggestion!
Jesus, though, took it over the top. Not just seven times, but seventy times seven.
In other words, we are to always be forgiving, according to the model that God demonstrates toward us.
There should be no limit because God has no limit with us.
Today, who has hurt us? Who has cut us deeply to our inner most private core?
Forgive them.
Let go of the hurt.
Let the wound heal. Better yet, let God heal the wound.
Give the pain, the hurt, the anger, the rage, the bitterness, the disappointment to God.
Let God do what God always does — He heals — in the way that He, the great physician, sees best.
Let go.
Let those hurts fall to the ground like autumn leaves.
2. Then there are those habits.
Unproductive habits, distracting us from the things we need to do.
Unhealthy habits, bringing physical, mental, and emotional afflictions into our lives.
Downright sinful habits, keeping the desires of our hearts absorbed in the things of this world.
Habits — things that we just keep doing because we’ve settled into a pattern — a way of doing things — a practice in our lives that after time becomes difficult to give up.
There are habits in our lives that interfere with our relationships with each other and our relationship with God.
We need to think about how we spend our days.
What are we repetitively doing each hour, each day, each week, that is taking us away from the ones we love?
What is filling our time? What is capturing our attention?
These are the habits that demand our mindfulness.
Habits should be caught early. The earlier we recognize them, the easier they are to break.
Pull Up the Roots of Bad Habits Early
By Sermon Central
From a sermon by Christian Cheong, True Seekers - Character, 6/13/2010
Copied from Sermon Central
A wise old tutor was once taking a stroll through a forest with a curious young boy. The tutor suddenly stopped and pointed to four plants close by. The first was a tiny sprout, just coming out of the earth. The second had rooted itself quite firmly in the fertile soil. The third was a small shrub. The fourth had grown into a well-developed tree.
The teacher said to his young student, "Pull up this first plant." The boy pulled it up easily with his fingers.
"Now pull up the second."
The boy obeyed, and with slight effort the plant came up, root and all.
"And now the third."
The boy pulled with one hand, then the other, but it would not come up. Then he took both hands, and the plant finally yielded to all his strength.
"And now," said the teacher, "try the fourth."
The boy grasped the trunk with all his might, but hardly a leaf shook.
"I cannot move it," he said.
“It is so, my son, with all our bad habits. When they are young and small, we can cast them out, but when they are full grown, they cannot be uprooted."
Maybe our habits are in their infant stages. Maybe they are like that little sprout, easy to pull out.
More than likely, though, our habits are like the tree, well rooted and grounded, and seemingly impossible to pull out.
Don’t lose hope, though.
Start by identifying the habits — finding the things that are getting in the way of our lives — things that are distracting us from our families, our jobs, our church, our God.
Write them down.
Enumerate them.
All of them. Every single one of them.
Then pray.
Pray that God will give us the strength we need to overcome.
You see, while we, on our own strength, may not be able to make the tree budge, God, the creator of all, has the power and strength to do anything He desires.
God, with the command of His voice, caused light to come into the universe.
God, with the command of His voice, made water.
God said, and the world came into being.
God said, and animals, fish, birds, and plants of every kind were made.
God said, and it was good.
God sent His Son to be born of a virgin.
God brought His Son back to life from the dead.
God raised His Son back to His side in Heaven.
As Mary said, in Luke 1,
37 “For with God nothing will be impossible.” (Luke 1, NKJV)
God will help us to overcome the habits that are dragging us down.
All we need to do is ask.
Just as earthly fathers do what is right and good for their earthy children, so God will do for us.
Pray that God will provide alternatives.
Pray that God will alert our minds when we are in a cycle of repeating and reinforcing those habits.
Pray that we will have the strength and courage to fill our minds with other things — the things of God.
Paul wrote to the church in Philippi:
8 …[D]ear brothers and sisters, one final thing. Fix your thoughts on what is true, and honorable, and right, and pure, and lovely, and admirable. Think about things that are excellent and worthy of praise. 9 Keep putting into practice all you learned and received from me—everything you heard from me and saw me doing. Then the God of peace will be with you. (Philippians 4, NLT)
Change what we are thinking about.
Change the channel on TV.
Change the music to which we listen.
Change the books we are reading.
Change the sights we see.
Then start new practices — start new actions that are consistent with the teachings of Paul, of the apostles, of Jesus.
Start new, healthy, productive, Godly habits.
Keep practicing them over and over and over.
Then we will find peace. Our hearts and our souls will find rest.
This morning, let go of the bad habits that are holding us down, keeping us bound in pain.
Let those habits fall to the ground, not to entangle us any more.
3. Finally, there are hang-ups.
Now I don’t mean with the telephone.
A hang-up is a psychological or emotional difficulty or inhibition.
A hang-up is an obstacle to progress or development.
A hang-up is a preoccupation, fixation, or psychological block. Some call it a complex.
A hang-up is a source of annoying difficulty or burden.
No wonder we need to set them free.
Office Copier Inspires "Dear John" Letter
William Hageman, "Needs Toner. Needs Paper. Needs a Decent Funeral," Chicago Tribune, (2-22-04).
Copied from Preaching Today
It’s like the story I read about a copier in a particular office. Every office battles the copier and all too frequently the copier is victorious. The fiction-writing department at Columbia College Chicago struck a blow for workers everywhere by documenting their troubles. In a diary of dissatisfaction entitled "Crumpled," entry after entry detailed the woes inflicted by the machine upon its users. Beyond the pedestrian complaints of misfeeds, error messages, strange noises, and mangling, one entry read: "Photocopier takes a bite out of Jan's hand. Blood is drawn." Clearly this extraordinary machine had attitude.
The multitude of frustrations prompted someone to write a letter to the copier.
To my darling Toshiba:
Dearest, I'm afraid this isn't going to work anymore. It's over—I must leave you. Don't act so shocked—this entire relationship was cursed from day one. We've had nothing but problems. At first, I could overlook the little things—the incessant humming, the acrid chemical smell seeping from you, your constant comments of "Warming Up, Please Wait" when all I wanted was to embrace you. But then it all became one endless malfunction—all your little hang-ups had you out of commission for days at a time!
Toshiba, I need some attention. I had to visit other Toshibas throughout the building, sometimes three to five times in one day! And you yourself—don't think I haven't noticed how often the repairman stops by, because I have! This is not a healthy situation for either of us, so I'm ending it right now. You should seek professional help.
What are our hang-ups?
What are the things in our lives to which we just keep hanging on?
The unhealthy things.
The unwise things.
The unGodly things.
We know they are causing us trouble in our lives, yet we just resist letting them go. We are in an abusive relationship with these things, people, or situations, yet we just cannot figure out how to end it and we do not walk away.
Today, during this season of fall, as the leaves are dropping the very thing that we admire, the colorful leaves, let’s examine our lives, and commit to letting go of the hang-ups that just keep sucking us back in, hurting us, and keeping us in emotional, social, and spiritual bondage.
Turn them over to God! Seek his help. Let him strengthen our lives. Ask him to bring healing into our world.
Conclusion
This morning, it’s time to let it go.
Let it all go.
All the hurts.
All the pain.
All the suffering.
All the anger, rage, desires of revenge.
All the bad habits.
All the hang-ups.
All of the stuff that keeps us looking backward instead of moving forward.
In Isaiah 43, God says to Israel:
18 “Forget the former things;? do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing!? Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
(Isaiah 43:18-19b, NIV)
Israel was hung-up on the past — constantly looking back to Egypt.
Constantly desiring the life in Egypt.
Constantly stuck in the past — a brutal and painful past of true slavery.
God was telling them to move on from the past. Bigger, better things lie ahead.
It’s time to move forward.
It’s time to heal.
It’s time to grow.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Hesse
German-Swiss poet Hermann Hesse wrote about the faith of his parents, stating: “their Christianity, one not preached but lived, was the strongest of the powers that shaped and moulded me”.
It was that foundation that later led him to write: “Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes [strength] is letting go.”
Today, I encourage us to examine our lives, examine our hearts, examine our motivations, examine our actions.
Look for the hurts, the habits, the hang-ups that keep our hearts imprisoned.
Let’s take a lesson from the trees — let’s let go.
Let’s release what keeps holding us back.
Because, you see, the trees know — they must let go.
The leaves falling to the ground and dying, though it may seem sad and painful, is the very thing that is needed to provide the nourishment the ground needs.
The dying and decaying leaves add nutrients back to the ground that gives food to the roots of the trees.
Then in the spring, new life returns.
The trees sprout new leaves.
We can spring forth in new life too once we let go of the hindrances that are holding us back.
Let’s let go today. I encourage us today to not leave this building without committing to personally examining our hearts.
Let’s let God take control.
Allow God to heal us, move forward in His strength and care, and grow in our faith and relationship with Him.
