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Welcome to THE TIMOTHY REPORT for November 8, 2004
“To assist, encourage, enable and equip”
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GRATITUDE
Gratitude ... goes beyond the "mine" and "thine" and claims the truth that
all of life is a pure gift. In the past I always thought of gratitude as a
spontaneous response to the awareness of gifts received, but now I realize
that gratitude can also be lived as a discipline. The discipline of
gratitude is the explicit effort to acknowledge that all I am and have is
given to me as a gift of love, a gift to be celebrated with joy.
--Henri J. M. Nouwen, http://nouwen.net/
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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THANKSGIVING
There's always a lot to be thankful for if you take time to look for it. For example, be thankful that wrinkles don't hurt.
--Unknown
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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GRATEFUL WORSHIP
Joni Eareckson Tada is that beautiful woman who became a quadriplegic through a diving accident at the age of seventeen. She hasn't walked or known feeling in her legs for two decades. While attending a convention, the speaker closed his message with an appeal for everyone to kneel in prayer. Mrs. Tada was the only one unable to perform the task. Although God knew her heart was kneeling, she began to cry because she wanted to physically kneel before her Lord. Through tears of passion she prayed: "Lord Jesus, I can't wait for the day when I will rise up on resurrected legs. The first thing I will then do is to drop on grateful, glorified knees and worship You."
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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YOU CHOOSE
Bob Reccord, the CEO of the North American Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, once found himself in an unexpected prison of pain.
After an injury, Reccord’s neck was so badly mangled, he couldn’t even undergo an MRI without being sedated. Within two days, he’d lost most of the strength in his left arm, and the use of three of his fingers. Reccord could only get through the day by using prescribed drugs, bags of ice, and catching sleep in a recliner.
The surgery was only the first step of Reccord’s recovery. He had to completely withdraw from the work he loved, he had to wear a neck brace 24 hours a day for five weeks, and still, the slightest movement could send pain radiating down his left side.
“About halfway through that experience, I found myself sitting on the screened-in porch behind our home,” Reccord later wrote. “The day was cold and blustery, but I was committed to being outside, just for a change of scenery. Suddenly a bird landed on the railing and began to sing. On that cold, rainy day, I couldn't believe any creature had a reason to sing. I wanted to shoot that bird! But he continued to warble, and I had no choice but to listen.
“The next day found me on the porch again, but this time the atmosphere was bright, sunny, and warm. As I sat, being tempted to feel sorry for myself, suddenly the bird (at least it looked like the same one) returned. And he was singing again! Where was that shotgun?
“Then an amazing truth hit me head on: the bird sang in the cold rain as well as the sunny warmth. His song was not altered by outward circumstances, but it was held constant by an internal condition. It was as though God quietly said to me, ‘You've got the same choice, Bob. You will either let external circumstances mold your attitude, or your attitude will rise above the external circumstances. You choose!’”
--Bob Reccord, Forged by Fire: How God Shapes Those He Loves (Broadman & Holman, Nashville, TN, 2000), p. 112
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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WISE USE OF WORDS
Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words will break our hearts.
--Robert Fulghum
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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GOD’S TIMETABLE, NOT OURS
I heard a story which illustrates how we often confuse God's timing with ours. A country newspaper had been running a series of articles on the value of church attendance.
One day, a letter to the editor was received in the newspaper office. It read, "Print this if you dare. I have been trying an experiment. I have a field of corn which I plowed on Sunday. I planted it on Sunday. I did all the cultivating on Sunday. I gathered the harvest on Sunday and hauled it to my barn on Sunday. I find that my harvest this October is just as great as any of my neighbors' who went to church on Sunday. So where was God all this time?"
The editor printed the letter, but added his reply at the bottom. "Your mistake was in thinking that God always settles his accounts in October."
That's often our mistake as well, isn't it -- thinking that God should act when and how we want him to act, according to our timetable rather than his. The fact that our vision is limited, finite, unable to see the end from the beginning, somehow escapes our mind. So we complain; we get frustrated; we accuse God of being indifferent to us.
That's when God gently reminds us that... "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).
God's timetable is perfect. He will do exactly what is best for us --in His own time-- according to his wonderful plans for us, because He loves us so much. Wait! Be patient! His clock may show a different time than our clock, but it's the right one.
--Adapted from "Extraordinary Faith For Ordinary Time" by Larry R. Kalajainen , CSS Publishing Company, Inc, 1994.
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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ANGER
In his autobiography, Number 1, Billy Martin told about hunting in Texas with Mickey Mantle. Mickey had a friend who would let them hunt on his ranch. When they reached the ranch, Mickey told Billy to wait in the car while he checked in with his friend. Mantle's friend quickly gave them permission to hunt, but he asked Mickey a favor.
He had a pet mule in the barn who was going blind, and he didn't have the heart to put him out of his misery. He asked Mickey to shoot the mule for him.
When Mickey came back to the car, he pretended to be angry. He scowled and slammed the door. Billy asked him what was wrong, and Mickey said his friend wouldn't let them hunt. "I'm so mad at that guy," Mantle said, "I'm going out to his barn and shoot one of his mules!" Mantle drove like a maniac to the barn. Martin protested, "We can't do that!" But Mickey was adamant. "Just watch me," he shouted.
When they got to the barn, Mantle jumped out of the car with his rifle, ran inside, and shot the mule. As he was leaving, though, he heard two shots, and he ran back to the car. He saw that Martin had taken out his rifle, too. "What are you doing, Martin?" he yelled.
Martin yelled back, face red with anger, "We'll show that son of a gun! I just killed two of his cows!" Anger can be dangerously contagious. As Proverbs puts it, "Do not make friends with a hot-tempered man ... or you may learn his ways" (Prov. 22:24-25).
-- Scott Bowerman, Bishopville, South Carolina. Leadership, Vol. 16, no. 1.
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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TEENAGERS
It isn’t what a teenager knows that worries his parents. It’s how he found out.
--Ann Landers
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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THE CAGED BIRD SINGS
Singer and teacher Annie Chapman was about to leave a women’s conference where she had spoken to 500 women. She had gathered her books and supplies when she spotted a solitary figure in the back of the auditorium.
The body language was unmistakable. Her head was bowed low. Her shoulders were drooping. Annie asked for the story, and soon got it. The downcast woman was the mother of three. Her oldest son had been confined to a wheelchair for most of his 17 years. The other two children had a variety of learning and emotional challenges.
Worst of all, she wasn’t getting any help from her helpmate. Head still bent, she whispered, "I'm married to a mean, hateful man who makes my life miserable. He won't help me with our son. He even refuses to help while I hold our son when he goes to the bathroom.
"I buried my father this week," the woman continued. "At the funeral I learned that my father had disinherited me from his estate because he hated my husband."
Then she told me something that still haunts me: "I came this weekend with one prayer," she said. "I asked God to kill my husband. I prayed, 'Lord, I need a way out! I feel like a bird in a cage.' "
Finally she lifted her eyes and said, "When I prayed that prayer, God spoke to me as clearly as I've ever sensed His voice. He said, 'Even a bird in a cage sings.' "
With tears running down her face she asked, "What am I supposed to do with that? How do I live with that answer?"
Annie Chapman didn’t know exactly what to say. So finally, she just repeated what God had said to the woman.
"If God says, 'sing,' you need to find your song."
--Annie Chapman, "Even in Pain, Finding Our Song," Decision (October 2002), p. 9
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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EVANGELISM
Oh, to realize that souls, precious, never dying souls, are perishing all around us, going out into the blackness of darkness and despair, eternally lost, and yet to feel no anguish, shed no tears, know no travail! How little we know of the compassion of Jesus!
--Oswald J. Smith
(The Timothy Report, www.timothyreport.com, November 8, 2004)
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