|
Gold in the Fire
by Jerry Ousley I read about a comparison of the probability of the "Big Bang Theory" You know the one that says that our planet and the life on it was a freak accident of some gigantic cosmic explosion. They say that after this big explosion our sun was formed, the planets sort of fell into place and the Earth was surrounded by a gas called oxygen. Somehow a single one celled creature was sparked into life, and began growing in the water. Sometime after that it turned into a fish and the fish grew legs and crawled out of the water and eventually evolved into all the life forms, including mankind, found on the face of the globe. The fellow making this comparison said that it was more probable to take all the tiny, delicate and precise parts of a watch, shake them up in a bag and pour them out completely assembled. The chance of that happening is monumental. We'd probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than for that to happen. And the chances of life happening according to the "Big Bang Theory" are even greater. I'd really hate to think that our existence on this planet is no more than that. A similar thing happened in the book of Exodus, chapter 32. Moses had been on top of Mount Sinai with God for a period of forty days. Down at the foot of the mountain the people could see the fire and smoke and they knew that God was still there, but they began to grow impatient and reasoned that Moses must have been consumed in the fire and wasn't coming back. They grabbed Aaron and demanded that he make a god they could see and worship. Aaron, fearing for his life, told them to bring him the golden earrings from their ears along with other jewelry and he'd basically see what he could do. He made a golden calf, set it up and the people began to dance, feast and worship this object claiming that it was the god that had brought them out of Egypt. They did this in the very presence of God whose glory still appeared on top of the mountain. Forty days prior they had heard the Ten Commandments with their own ears, and those commandments included the one that spoke of making images and having gods before the great and mighty true God. They broke this commandment only forty days after hearing it. Meanwhile, up on the mountain, after God had engraved the commandments on tables of stone and given instruction to Moses, He told the man Moses to get back down the mountain because the people had fallen into sin. To shorten this story a bit, when Moses arrived back at the foot he saw what was going on and symbolically threw those precious tables of stone on the ground breaking them just as the people had broken God's commandments. When he confronted Aaron he told Moses the story ending with, "I threw the gold into the fire and this calf came out." Yeah, right. What are the chances of that happening? He made an excuse for himself. The point is that we still make excuses. We have become masters of the art of creating excuses. We justify ourselves by blaming situations, other people, and misunderstanding. While there are times when excuses are legitimate more often than not they are simply ways to make us appear as innocent victims instead of being guilty of wrongdoing. I know this is hard but let's just face the plain facts here; it happens. How much better it would be to just own up to the truth? Think of it, no more blame game, no more face saving; just taking responsibility for our actions and making things right. Excuses extend to our relationship with God as well. There are a host of excuses for not coming to God for salvation. Turning to God requires us to drop all excuses, stop trying to justify ourselves for our actions and stand guilty before God. That's what He wants from us. We repent of our sin and He accepts us into His kingdom. Then we keep repenting. Even though the Spirit of Christ has taken up abode in our lives we still step backward sometimes and we need to own up to that too. Let's not keep on throwing gold into the fire waiting on an accidental golden calf to come out. Instead, let's man-up and take the blame. Repent to God, tell others that we're sorry for our actions and life might just be a whole lot easier and better. Jerry D. Ousley is the author of ?Soul Challenge?, ?Soul Journey?, ?Ordeal?, ?The Spirit Bread Daily Devotional and his first novel ?The Shoe Tree.? Visit our website at spiritbread.com to download these and more completely free of charge. Article Source: http://www.faithwriters.com |