Getting on with it

I always remember this interview Oprah once had with a woman who was held hostage in Columbia for six-plus years. The lasting message she said she took away from the horrific ordeal was, “Whoever the person you ultimately want to be, that one you always dream about one day becoming, just be that person right now. You don’t have to wait.”

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Here’s a great passage from an old study of Jordan’s: “What I represent, what I do, all of it is to come from orders from home. And I’m just a little colony of home down here. Can you imagine that? Look around you this morning; we’re an outpost of heaven.

“You send dudes up into space and put them in the spaceship up there, whatever you see in the movies. Well, we’re just that from heaven. God reached out in the world and took a bunch of old dirt bags like us, made of dust, put a little spit in it, molded a man and then He put His life in you and made you part of heaven. That’s who we really are.

“Our conversation . . . our sense of our identity is in heaven. It’s that nobler affinity, that grander purpose, that protection and security that comes from really knowing who you are.

“You know why I can press toward the mark for the prize? It’s because I really know what’s going on. I really know what I’m a part of. He didn’t just save me to keep me out of hell. He saved me to make me a citizen and a part of the commonwealth of His kingdom. And He didn’t just give me a citizen card to put my little nametag on that says, ‘Oh, I’m in!’ He said, ‘You know, I want to associate you with a lifestyle that I’ve established. And I want to demonstrate that in your life.’

“It isn’t just that we’re representing heaven but I’m also looking for this thing to get completed. Aren’t you glad of that? ‘From whence also we look for the Savior.’ When He says we’re looking for Christ the Savior we’re looking for Him. I’m not looking for the undertaker, I’m not looking to get rich, I’m not looking for an overthrow of the government, I’m not looking for the cure of AIDS, I’m looking for Christ. He’s the hope.

“When Paul says, ‘We look,’ we have that earnest expectation; that eager anticipation for Him to appear. Now that’s a dispensational issue as well as a practical issue.

“One of the hard things to do when you teach people is to help folks move out of the sentimental-based thinking into good hard doctrinal reality that gives substance to their hope. Their hope will then give the sentimental attachment.

“People say, ‘Why don’t I just start with the sentimental attachment and forget how I got there?’ Because as soon as the wind blows you get off that sentimental attachment. If it’s all based in your sentiment, when the wind blows the other way your sentiment turns around and you’re mad sentimentally in your emotions. You know that.

“You’ve talked to somebody and one moment you’ve loved them and the next minute you’ve hated them. You went out and bought that new car and you couldn’t do without that thing; you had to have it! That shiny, little red job with all the gadgets. You couldn’t stand to be deprived of having that thing.

“Some of you found some person you thought you had to have as a spouse. Couldn’t live without them. Six months later it’s, ‘Can’t live with ’em!’ You go buy that car and sign up for 60 months of payments and before five years is up you’re gonna hate that car so bad you’ll want to take a sledgehammer to it and then you’re still gonna have 14 months of payments to make.

“Your emotions can change like that. You need your hope built on something that doesn’t change. That’s why you don’t base it on your experience and your sentiment; you base it on some hard, cold facts of Bible doctrine that then will produce . . . you see if you’ve got the facts and you place your faith in the facts, that faith in the facts of God’s Word will bear fruit and the fruit will produce some feeling.

“But the feelings are like the tip end of the tail on the dog. They come last! My daddy used to say that he liked everything on the pig including the part that jumps over the fence last. That’s where feelings are! Get the whole pig over the fence and the feelings will get there. And if they don’t, you know what; you’re not going to worry about it because the pig’s over the fence.”

(new article tomorrow)