Right Game, Wrong Clothes
Most of us have great memories from our youth where we dreamed of emulating our favorite sports heroes. Who doesn't wanna aspire to play baseball like a Barry Bonds, basketball like LeBron James, hockey like Wayne Gretzgi, or football like Tom Brady?
Pass any park on a beautiful Saturday afternoon and you're likely to see a bunch of kids tossing a football around, running plays, and tackling each other to the ground like the Superbowl championship was at stake.
Maybe for Christmas or your birthday one year, your parents bought you a football uniform, complete with helmet, pads, and a jersey and pants from your favorite team. You'd have looked like a regular little football player.
Eventually, though, you'd have likely discovered that a football uniform does not make one a football player!!! You can't just dress up and make it so.
Some of us sitting in church pews today are not so unlike those young kids dressing up like their sports heroes. We want to be Christian. We wanna be a good Christian, maybe even a great one.
We come to church each Sunday dressed in our Sunday best. We carry our Bibles or our iPads with the latest Bible app. We maybe even mount the stage to lead songs of worship and praise.
We do all of the expected things of a church goer. But just as the old saying goes: Just because a mouse is in the cookie jar, it doesn’t make the mouse a cookie!!!
The only way we can be properply suited up for this thing we call the Christian life is to have a personal RELATIONSHIP with Jesus Christ the Risen Savior through faith in Him and His completed work on our behalf!
Don't show up to the right game in the wrong clothes. We need to be clothed in HIS righteousness alone!
"I delight greatly in the LORD; my soul rejoices in my God. For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness, as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels" (Isaiah 61:10, NIV).
"... for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ" (Galatians 3:27, NIV).
"God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV).
The Dating Stamp of Approval
Michelle Arshad, 24, from Toronto, Canada, has had it with traditional dating and trying to find Mr. Right, so she's taken matters into her own hands. Or, taken matters to others' hands. Or, well, something like that.
Ms. Arshad has decided to look for Mr. Right in her own, very innovative way. She now visits local bars and hangouts with an assortment of stamps with which to mark prospective "good dating" candidates.
The stamp of choice reads, "You're cute ... You should hit me up."
With the flick of the wrist, she places her stamp of approval on dating (and potentially mating) prospects.
She shared her strategy in a TikTok video which now has over 2.4 million views.
What could possibly go wrong?
Ladies, "cuteness" is a lousy criterion for dating material.
You want a man with a "stamp of approval," all right. But you want to be sure he carries the ultimate stamp. You want a man after God's own heart. A man who carries the Lord's seal of approval.
Next time you're out looking for a date or a mate, make sure the Lover of his soul has already stamped him with His own mark.
Consider 2 Corinthians 1:22. The New Century Version renders it this way, "He put his mark on us to show us that we are His, and He put His Spirit in our hearts to show us that we are really His."
The Message Version renders verses 20,22 this way, "Whatever God has promised gets stamped with the Yes of Jesus. ... By his Spirit he has stamped us with his eternal pledge - a sure beginning of what he is destined to complete."
Before you place your stamp of approval, look for the Lord's first.
Don't Turn Your Back on the Manger
SAD AND USELESS, a "humor in the news" blog site, reports:
Photographer Oliver Curtis has spent several years going to famous tourism objects and landmarks and pointing his camera in the opposite direction, therefore purposefully capturing the famous landmarks without the actual landmark.
*The above pic is The Wailing Wall, looking the other way. Follow the "Link to Source" above for reverse pics of The Great Wall of Chin, The Mona Lisa, Stonehenge, and many more.
The locations of the world’s most famous landmarks are pretty mundane without the presence of the landmark itself. So why would anyone want to turn their back on a landmark? Who is interested in a world of the mundane, the ordinary, absent of any obvious object of import or significance?
That same question could be asked of those who live their lives without God. To turn your back on God is to reject the One who adds true meaning and significance to an otherwise meaningless life.
But when we allow God His proper place in our lives, spectacular things happen, even in the midst of the ordinary.
In fact, it is the ordinary that provides the backdrop for the truly important landmarks of life—things like the New Birth, a rededication, a moment of grace, or an act of forgiveness.
The spectacular can and does happen anywhere—even among the ordinary—even in a stable—even in a feeding trough. Turn your back on the "babe" and the manger scene is just another barn.
"This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger" (Luke 2:12).