Thought Provoking Thursday

"Great opportunities often get passed by because they're dressed in overalls and look like work."

Trip to Natural Bridge, VA

On our way to visit my brother at Crown College, we stopped by the Natural Bridge in VA for some sight seeing. Unfortunately, I lost most of my pictures due to a fried memory card. Here are a few though:

Thought Provoking Thursday

God's greatest blessings come from following His will, in His way, and in His time.

Thought Provoking Thursday

"The things that make God dear to us are not as much His great big blessings as the tiny things; because they show His amazing intimacy with us; He knows every detail of our individual lives."

~ Oswald Chambers

99.9% Committed?

As consumerists, we expect perfection from services rendered or items purchased. Near perfection or half-hearted efforts don't satisfy us, and many times we complain if things aren't exactly as we want them. The Canadian company Syncrude Canada Ltd. desired to motivate employees to strive for perfection, so they published a list of near-perfect results in their company publication Insight:

If 99.9 percent is good enough, then...

- Two million documents will be lost by the IRS this year.
- 22,000 checks will be deducted from the wrong bank accounts in the next 60 minutes.
- 1,314 phone calls will be misplaced by telecommunication services every minute.
- 12 babies will be given to the wrong parents each day.
- 268,500 defective tires will be shipped this year.
- 103,260 income tax returns will be process incorrectly this year. - 2,488,200 books will be shipped in the next 12 months with the wrong cover.
- Two plane landings daily at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago will be unsafe.
- 3,056 copies of tomorrow's Wall Street Journal will be missing one of the three sections.
- 18,322 pieces of mail will be mishandled in the next hour.
- 291 pacemaker operations will be performed incorrectly this year. - 55 malfunction automatic teller machines will be installed in the next 12 months.
- 20,000 incorrect drug prescriptions will be written in the next 12 months.
- 114,500 mismatched pairs of shoes will be shipped this year.
- $761,900 will be spent in the next 12 months on tapes and compact discs that won't play.
- 107 incorrect medical procedures will be performed by the end of the day today.
- 315 entries in Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language will turn out to be misspelled.

If we wouldn't allow a company to send us a defective product or mistaken order without complaining and demanding a replacement, why do we offer God less than 100% of our lives? 

Too many Christians give God parts of their lives without wholly committing themselves to Him. They accept parts of God's commands and follow His will partially, but don't give up total control to God.

Paul is a perfect example of what a wholly committed Christian can accomplish for God's glory. Just before his death, Paul wrote Timothy to encourage him in his Christian journey. Paul starts off his second letter to Timothy by assuring him that no matter what Paul faced, he was confident in God's will: "Whereunto I am appointed a preacher, and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles. For the which cause I also suffer these things: nevertheless I am not ashamed: for I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against that day." Paul had wholly committed his life to God.

Have you ever given God your life? God doesn't simply want parts of your life, or areas you're comfortable giving away, but every idea, goal, dream, aspiration, behavior, and desire. God gave you all He had when He sent Jesus to die for your sins; don't you want to give Him everything you have?

To learn more about the ministries of Lancaster Baptist Church and Pastor Chappell, please visit lancasterbaptist.org, paulchappell.com, or follow him on twitter.

Thought Provoking Thursday

"You can borrow brains, but you can't borrow character."

Dr. Bob Jones, Sr.