BERNARD SHUFORD

I beseech you, therefore, Bernard, that you present your desire to be “well known” as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God.

Gulp.

It gives me pride that I know a LOT of people.  It’s not unusual at all for me to run into people that I know in places that aren’t necessarily close to where we live.  It gives me pride that they know me.

Sacrifice it.  Give that feeling of self-importance to God.  Put it on the altar.  Put it there again, because it will rise up again.

It only matters that I know Christ and He knows me.

Really.  That’s all.  No other fame should be desired than His.

Ouch.  That sacrificial knife hurts.

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I’m mentally blown out.  I’m spiritually burned out.  I’m emotionally drained.  I’m “stuck in the bed in the morning” physically wasted.

What’s a guy to do when he needs two weeks off so bad he can taste it but it is absolutely impossible within the next 2-3 months?

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So I went to pick up Trav at football practice today.  We almost never leave him “alone” at football practice, for a myriad of reasons, but today was a little different in that his lil sis had Girl Scouts and Karma had to transport her there.

Trav was not entirely comfortable with the arrangement (his discomfort is one of the “myriad reasons”) but finally agreed that, perhaps, he would be okay.

I got there a few minutes later than I had intended, even though I was much earlier than I had to be to pick him up.

Within a couple minutes of me arriving at the fence, he spotted me.  Normally, we don’t get a lot of attention, because, after all, we’re parents.  This time, however, the look of relief was obvious, and his hand popped up in a wave that made it clear he was glad I was there.

Probably a hundred times a day, God shows up at the fence for me, and I don’t even notice it.  When I do notice, it always makes me feel much better.

God’s looking at you.  Have you noticed?

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Today I worked with a man who dropped F-bombs and S-bombs like most people breath. I have never in my life heard the words used quite so repetitiously, except perhaps by teenage boys desperate to make an impression on some other teenage boy.

It really never seemed to occur to him that the rest of us weren’t using those words. Most of the guys I work with are capable of various bombs, but none of them just seem to spew them like Roman candles on the Fourth of July.

I think we Christians are often like that. Talking in our own little language, absolutely unconscious of the fact that everybody around us doesn’t use those words.

There’s a lesson to learn in just about everything, even exceptionally excessive “cursing”.

Wow.

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I regard Chuck Swindoll as perhaps my favorite preacher of all time.  Chip Ingram rides in second, and Alistair Begg is a close third. I know it’s somewhat due to the time of day that I typically listen to the radio, but God has spoken to me through these guys many times.

Monday evening, I was traveling alone for about an hour and a half, and God used Chuck’s radio broadcast to absolutely slap me up-side the head with Romans 12:1.

My body, a living sacrifice.  After all these years, it suddenly made sense.  The things that are about ME, I need to make a specific effort to sacrifice them.

My thin skin – I need to sacrifice it.  My desire to be heard – I need to sacrifice it.  My whiny attitude of late – I need to sacrifice it.  My desire to be right.  My desire to be pitied.

That was just the start.  I didn’t even hear the whole sermon, yet God’s just ripping me to shreds with it.

Who does God seemingly always use to get to you?

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