Wednesday, August 15, 2018

Day of Praise

Wed, 08/15/18, "Day of Praise"

Football season is in the air. I'm so excited!!! So I pulled up this old devotion to help us get ready for the season. 
 
"Then the Lord answered Job out of the storm. He said: 'Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me.'" - Job 38:1-3
 
All I remember is that he looked as big as the Biblical Goliath, and all I could do was laugh.
 
I was a non-scholarship, practice player with The University of Tennessee football team, commonly known to the public as a "walk-on", but commonly known to the scholarship football players as a "blocking dummy".
 
He, by contrast, was the all-time sack leader at Tennessee and was on his way to being the all-time sack leader in the National Football League, who would have his number retired at the University and enter the Pro Hall of Fame.
 
When we ran our conditioning tests at the start of training camp, we ran side by side, and he ran them faster than me, even though I was 5'10" and 174 lbs, and he was 6'3" and 295 lbs.
 
His name was Reggie White, aka, The Minister of Defense because he was also ordained as a Baptist Minister about the time he finished high school.
 
Tragically he tasted a premature death from a heart condition, but he did a lot of great things with his life.
 
One thing he did was humble me, along with a lot of other people. In my case, I was supposed to block him, as he was on the punt return team and I was on the practice-squad punt team.
 
He said, "C'mon Chris, give me some more resistance!" I said, "Reggie, it takes three guys, twice my size, to try to block you in real games, and they can't do it. So what do you want me to do?"
 
It was humbling. And Reggie was merely a man.
 
Imagine how humbled Job felt in today's verse when God says, "Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me." (Job 38:1-3)
 
I was humbled by a mountain of a man. Job was humbled by the God who made every mountain!
 
And yet if you read the balance of the book of Job, you see some great things come from being humbled: 1) Job's prayers are rich toward God and others, 2) Job's prayers are effective, 3) Job and his life are restored in a multitude of ways.
 
There is some mountain or mountain of a person that is waiting for you today that will humble you.
 
Trust the God who made every mountain!
 
He will work with your humility and bless you!
 
Praise God!


Pastor Chris 
"The gospel is the story of Jesus [what God's only Son has done for us that we can't do for ourselves], spoken as a promise." - Robert Jenson

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