FWD's......

We all hate to see that in the subject line in our email inbox don't we? It's so funny because most of the time...sorry to anyone who sends them to me...I don't even open them and read them. Sometimes I do, however, and occasionally they are funny or cute or whatever. But for the most part they go straight to the delete folder because I'm scared to death to give this dinosaur computer of mine any potentially lethal virus it can't recover from.

Lately though I've been getting these "warning" fwd's. Warning about political candidates and where they stand, warning about movies that are harmful to my kids, warning about exposing kids to household cleaning products, warnings. It can drive a person to lock your kids in the house and never go out again, if you've lost your mind anyway! haha Seriously though it's strange that these warning fwd's have hit me so much lately.

So, how does God meet my rising anxiety? With a message from Dr. Rummage yesterday that laid it wide open for me. "Developing Spiritual Discernment" was the title and I Thess. 5:19-22 was the Scripture. For time sake I'll just give you his points. To have spiritual discernment we must 1. FOLLOW God's Spirit. 2. LOVE God's word. 3. TEST ALL THINGS. 4. Embrace the TRUTH. 5 REJECT falsehood. (emphasis mine) This is how we're gonna experience maximum joy in this life. Do these things. Easy enough right? HARDLY!! Living a Christ-centered life is WORK people. There's no free ride, easy train, life. We gotta do the hard work. We gotta say NO to the movies we know aren't good for our kids. We gotta say NO to relationships that we feel are not in our/their best interest. We gotta be willing to be unpopular, to be unliked, to be DIFFERENT.

So while I appreciate the warnings I get it's not the first time I've heard of these things. I think we have a tendency to get so wrapped up in our own little bubbles of life that we lose our "Kingdom Vision". Jesus told us thousands of years ago "Watch out that no one deceives you (political candidates). You will hear of wars and rumors of wars (Iraq/Iran/Afghanistan/North Korea), but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come." Mth 24:5-6 with my inserts. Ya'll none of these warnings are new and yet I get these things from people who seem surprised. Look at the hope, even in the middle of all that stuff Jesus was talking about. Do you see it? "but the end is still to come" Ya'll, He's coming! If we're His, He's coming to get us! He's coming to rescue us! Praise His Name!

"'Yes I am coming soon.' Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." Rev 22:20