Seeing the donut, not the hole

Well, sure enough, I'm so tired I can't keep my eyes open and thus I will have to finish new article tomorrow and post it then.

"It was 1936 and two friends serving together at a Sunday school conference in Alabama were at lunch, sharing what God was doing in their lives," writes Aaron Earls. "One, a missionary to Brazil home on furlough, told the other, a hymn writer leading the music for the conference, that a health issue would keep him from returning to the country he had grown to love. The news, received just days before, had broken his heart.

"The hymn writer asked, 'What will you do?' And through tears, the missionary, R.S. Jones, told the hymn writer, B.B. McKinney, 'Wherever He leads, I’ll go.' McKinney was so moved that he penned the classic hymn that afternoon and sang it that night after Jones had preached, recounts Terry C. Terry, a musicologist who wrote his doctoral dissertation about McKinney. Since then, this song has been sung at invitation times and crusades, revivals and worship services."

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"Katherine Hankey (1834-1911) was 32 years old when she wrote the hymn, 'I Love to Tell the Story,' out of her heart's deep desire to tell the simple gospel story wherever she was in life," explains writer Helen Salem Rizk.

"First, it was in the Sunday school of Clapham, England, where she became a devoted, refined, consecrated woman. Then, it was in the heart of Africa, where she spent most of her life, giving the sales of all her writings to missions. Finally, it was in the hospitals of London, where she spent the last minutes of her life telling lonely patients of God's beautiful love. When Hankey wrote the song in 1866, she was doing more than expressing a feeling in her own being, she was projecting that same feeling into the minds of thousands of people through the years who would sing her song and receive the same challenge."

The song goes in part:

I love to tell the story, more wonderful it seems

1. Than all the golden fancies of all our golden dreams;
   I love to tell the story, it did so much for me,
   And that is just the reason I tell it now to thee.
2. I love to tell the story, ’tis pleasant to repeat,
   What seems each time I tell it more wonderfully sweet;
   I love to tell the story, for some have never heard
   The message of salvation from God’s own holy Word.
3. I love to tell the story, for those who know it best
   Seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest;
   And when in scenes of glory I sing the new, new song,
   ’Twill be the old, old story that I have loved so long.
4. *****
5. Christianity is really, as Ephesians 3:20 makes clear, the outworking of the indwelling life of the risen Savior in us.
6. Paul exhorts in Ephesians 5, "Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.
   [15] See then that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise,
   [16] Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
   [17] Wherefore be ye not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is.
7. “You know how you walk circumspectly?” asks Richard Jordan. “You walk carefully. You watch where you put your feet. You give attention to the details of your life to bring it all into conformity with who you are in Christ.
   “He’s saying, ‘When you wake up to all the things that are yours in Christ . . . Awake, arise, look at what Christ has given you! Wake up to who you really are in Christ!
   
   
   “You’re not looking for the place NOT to put your foot; you’re looking for the place TO put your foot. I don’t want to put it on the (garden) snake, I want to put it over here where there’s nothing but good ground. I’m walking circumspectly, looking for the opportunity to be who I am in Christ. To let that be what’s important. To buy up the time.
   
   
   “Somebody said the difference between an optimist and a pessimist is the optimist sees the doughnut and the pessimist sees the hole. You’re looking for the opportunities. Paul says, ‘Awake, let who you are in Christ have an impact.’
   
   
   “That’s why he starts in verse 18 and following telling you the proscribed social order for the Believer. We walk intelligently, in love, distinctly, and we have a life that simply reflects who we are in Christ.
   
   
   “These chapters in Ephesians show us the difference between what it looks like when we do it and when He does it. What I’ve discovered through the years is that a lot of people think it looks like this, and they’re thinking religion, and when they hear it’s really this, they say, ‘Woah, wait a minute, what a difference.’ Probably one of the greatest impetuses toward getting people to trust Christ alone is that!
   
   
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   “In II Corinthians 3, Paul talks about the Corinthians being the living epistles. He explains, ‘Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.’
   
   
   “It struck me one day, ‘If they were the epistles ministered by Paul, didn’t Paul write some epistles?’ In essence, he’s saying that you and I are really ‘Romans through Philemon.’ THAT’S what He writes in your heart!
   
   
   “Now, God doesn’t automatically write it in there. It’s what He writes in your heart as you take in that truth. It’s the intake.
   
   
   “Paul said, ‘The outward man perishes but the inward man is renewed day by day.’ How’s it renewed?  You’re renewed in the SPIRIT of your mind. Paul says, ‘And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.’
   
   
   “How often should your mind be being renewed? Day by day. It’s that daily intake, that moment-by-moment application of the truth of God’s Word in the details of your life. That’s really called prayer.
   
   
   “It’s looking at everything that happens in your life and thinking before God; talking to God about what’s going on, and what His Word says about what’s going on, and how His Word can be applied to that--how what His Word says your attitude should be about that insult, that temptation, that rejection, etc.
   
   
   “You say, ‘Well, I don’t know what it says.’ But you do know! Because when you don’t know, what do you do? You go find out!
   
   
   “Now all of a sudden I need to know how to ‘rightly divide.’ You wouldn’t have to talk people into rightly dividing if they lived like THAT!
   
   
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   “You see how this thing just becomes life; becomes living? Why? Because He is our life. That’s how He IS your life. Folks, these are not mindless clichés designed for preachers to have something to talk about and you go, ‘Uh-huh, uh-huh.’
   
   
   “This is the living reality for the way God made your soul, your inner man, to function and a guy like me is trying to say them in 15 different ways so that maybe one of them will, ‘DING!,’ turn on the light for you and make it real.
   
   
   “If it isn’t real in your life, it’s just because you haven’t believed it; the verse says the ‘word WORKS in you that believe.’
   
   
   “You can say, ‘I don’t really care,’ but there will be a day when you do. You can say, ‘It’s not for me.’ There will be a day when it will be for you. Just remember some little old nut told you there was an answer and get in Romans through Philemon and find it.”