April 17 2018 – Click here to listen
So today I’m sore as the dickens. I endured skin cancer surgery on my back Friday and reconstructive oral surgery yesterday. I’ve quit counting how many times I’ve had surgery, but it’s a considerable number and I have scars all over me.
Last night I accidentally bumped my back on something where the skin cancer was removed, and it bled all over my sheets. And my swollen mouth was
bleeding from the stitches in my gums and bled all over my pillowcase. I didn’t sleep an hour.
Ugh!
As I’m typing away, I have a splitting headache and really am not in the mood to write this or do anything. I was thinking of Words for the Day when I woke up this morning and realized that in June I will have reached a milestone, I will have been writing it five days a week for twenty years regardless of how I might feel. I’ve written it many times when I was sick, recovering from surgery, on business trips, on holidays and on vacation.
I don’t write them ahead of time because I feel the Holy Spirit wants me to do it daily as He moves me. Some of the entries may not appeal to a reader, but others seem to be written specifically for them. I believe the Holy Spirit uses it that way for His purpose.
A few of them that seem very powerful to me get nearly zero response, and others that don’t seem to be meaningful at all to me fill my incoming box with commentary. Sometimes I write something that makes one person mad enough to threaten me only to have others applaud me.
I used to fight it out with those opposed to what I write, but not so much these days. I don’t really care. I began writing it because I hoped that it might help someone occasionally and also because I felt God wanted me to do so. I don’t write it to enrich myself, or for the praise of those who read it, or for that matter the praise of God. I am merely being obedient and doing my duty. This reminds me of a verse in Matthew 17:11 – . . . if you merely obey me, you should not consider yourself worthy of praise. For you have merely done your duty.
Is there anything you sacrificially do for the Lord that you do just to be obedient? Something for which you do not expect compensation, or praise from your peers or from God? I hope so.
Last Sunday in church the pastor said that less than 10% of the people in Florida are practicing Christians. I had just read an article about how Christians are having to adapt to becoming a minority in this country.
Really?
This is a sad thing to me. If only all Christians would share the Gospel daily, just think about how quickly that situation would change.
Do your duty my friends – Just do your duty!
Duet. 10:12
” . . . what does the LORD your God require from you, but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all His ways and love Him, and to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul,”