Tag Archives: wisdom

When Disaster Strikes You

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Proverbs 1: 20-33 Wisdom’s Rebuke

Out in the open wisdom calls aloud, she raises her voice in the public square; on top of the wall she cries out, at the city gate she makes her speech:

“How long will you who are simple love your simple ways? How long will mockers delight in mockery and fools hate knowledge? Repent at my rebuke! Then I will pour out my thoughts to you, I will make known to you my teachings. But since you refuse to listen when I call and no one pays attention when I stretch out my hand, since you disregard all my advice and do not accept my rebuke, I in turn will laugh when disaster strikes you; I will mock when calamity overtakes you – when calamity overtakes you like a storm, when disaster sweeps over you like a whirlwind, when distress and trouble overwhelm you. Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord. Since they would not accept my advice and spurned my rebuke, they will eat the fruit of their ways and be filled with the fruit of their schemes. For the waywardness of the simple will kill them, and the complacency of fools will destroy them; but whoever listens to me will live in safety and be at ease, without fear of harm.”

If you’ve ever been to Hollywood, CA you’ve surely picked up on the extreme diversity of fortunes in the area. The very heights of human fame and glory mixed side by side with the lowest depths we can sink. Shining wealth mixed with rotting decay. When I was walking around Hollywood last summer I took the picture above to capture that feeling I had. My hotel a hotbed of cool, and the outer surroundings a cesspool of desperation to gain entrance into that club. All around me plastic idols to worship, and human suffering and lost souls to absorb. Spray painted graffiti on a wall less than a mile from where the Oscars are held it reads: “Expect us cappin”…and I do expect such. That’s the nature of wicked man that has always played out. Wisdom calls out and no one pays attention when she stretches out her hand. She promises that when disaster strikes…they will call to her and she will not answer. She will laugh.

Last night in Australia, one of America’s iconic famous people, Madonna, had another onstage meltdown, as her life spirals out of control. While on stage in front of thousands, she begged to the crowd, “Someone please (F-word) me.” Then she pleaded to the crowd…”Somebody take care of me please. Who is going to take care of me?” Wisdom has turned her back. Madonna who once sang to an entire generation of impressionable young girls, “Papa Don’t Preach,” now begs to those aged fans to care for her, as they witness her implosion.

Kim Kardashian, world famous, fabulously wealthy, married to Kanye West equally both, and whose father is another world famous icon as an athlete, who is now a woman named, Caitlyn, just couldn’t help herself but to post a totally nude selfie to the world this past week. Never stopping to think of how much influence she wields, and what that behavior adds to the world below she lives on top of. She begs for more adoration down to her very flesh – worship all of me she pleads. Wisdom turns her back.

Richard Simmons, cultural American exercise icon and silly personality, who lives in the Hollywood Hills, was revealed this week by his friends to be of great concern and worry. Cutting himself off suddenly from the world over 2 years ago and holed up in his Hollywood mansion. Many fear he’s under total control by his housekeeper and manager. They called out in a published article for someone to help him. One friend even claimed voodoo and black magic are being used on him by the housekeeper. The occult. Richard Simmons…cut off from the world where is face is universally known.

Legendary rock music artist, Keith Emerson, shot and killed himself this week. His girlfriend said the 71 year old was deeply depressed and hurt by online comments mocking his playing ability at this stage in life. He suffered from nerve damage that left him not as talented as he once was. He had shows coming up in Japan that he feared he would play terrible during. He killed himself. His fans who rose him up, ultimately took him all the way down.

This past week, Randy Meisner, legendary bass player and vocalist from, The Eagles, was also involved in more iconic tragedy. 1 1/2 hours after police had left their home for a domestic disturbance call, his wife accidently shot and killed herself by moving a loaded weapon. Not long before Randy was involved in a foiled murder/suicide threat. His wife is now dead and he’s in lockdown in a mental facility in LA.

Even world famous Christian pastor, Max Lucado, recently felt a taste of wrath tied to complacency, when he dared to step out on a limb and call out presidential candidate and billionaire, Donald Trump. Pastor Lucado, author of many best selling books and bible studies, and having a net worth estimated around 10 million dollars gained on the back of Christianity, was shocked at the hit back he received from Trump’s supporters. I was proud of the pastor for having the guts to put his brand (his name) on the line to say something important. It showed that wisdom has been calling out and he heard her and acted. This leader who was so far disconnected to the reality of the world all around him, as he rested comfortably in a bubble of false teaching for profit, suddenly made a dent into Satan’s grip on this world. The result frightened him. It should have. Welcome to the spiritual war, Pastor.

When disaster strikes, who will have your back? Do you know? Can you run safely into the arms of God because your relationship with him is rock solid in teaching and understanding? Or will you be like Madonna…”Who is going to take care of me?” Disaster is going to strike…it’s assured. In my life it has struck several times already, and I’m only 49 years old. I run towards God and his protection. His grace. His love. His discipline. His rebuke. He has surrounded me with loyalty and I give it back equally. He has instilled in me values and knowledge to comprehend the moments I am in. These things haven’t happened by accident. I had to hear her. I had to see those arms stretched out and listen. I had to accept her rebuke.

One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to accept, and I still struggle with it, is not getting personal credit for the things I do. Why don’t I? God protects me from stories and endings like all the ones I just listed from just this past week. I understand that’s why, but I also live in this world where Hollywood’s exist and my worldly ego feels it belongs in them. God knows where that leads and I belong to him. He won’t allow me to go there. Thanks be to God. The rebukes will keep coming until I fully relent once and for all. Even Pastor Lucado…that’s not for me. That’s not my destiny. I work for Him. It’s just how it’s to be. Glory be to God…not to Gary’s. This is the most dangerous ground I walk upon, and that’s why all those stories above ring in my heart and capture my attention. Yet, even though I still struggle with this, God pours abundance upon me uninterrupted, as he uses me for his purposes. Always showing and teaching me the way it all works in harmony between He and his own. I want for nothing. My purpose full of meaning and wonder. I’ve come a long way in this lesson. I will not turn back. I hear her and adhere to her teachings.

Do you? When disaster strikes you…where will you turn?

Gary Abernathy

 

 

In God We Trust

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Proverbs 3: 1-10…Wisdom Bestows Well-Being…”My son, do not forget my teaching, but keep my commandments in your heart, for they will prolong your life many years and bring you peace and prosperity. Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. Then you will win favor and a good name in the sight of God and man. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.”

The picture above is one of the two bibles that rest on the altar just steps away from where I write. One of them is my own study bible that originally drew my heart into hearing God’s words for me. The instrument that began to explain in detail to me why he created me. The other is the one pictured that belonged to my wife’s grandmother. A simple and devoutly faithful woman who lived in rural Kentucky her entire life. My wife Lisa holds her in the highest esteem. Her grandmother was God’s bedrock placed in her life as she grew up. The one who instilled the promise of salvation within her as she stumbled her way to eventually finding that promise to be true. When I put together that altar in the process of enormous change in my life to keep me grounded in relationship, and to display to my own family the vital importance of God’s daily presence in our lives, she quietly placed that bible along with mine. One day it wasn’t there and the next it was. When I pray daily, there is a symbolic piece on the altar where I ask to be made good soil for his word to be sown. There is a rock that I brought from the summit of Mt. Pisgah in an exercise of obedience, where I ask for just that…to be given strength to be obedient, and there are the 2 bibles. I place my hands on both, and I ask that his wisdom and knowledge be poured into me, so that it may come back out correctly for his will, his purposes, and his glory. Then I say, “And say hello to Lisa’s grandmother for me.” I do this mostly every day.

I never knew her grandmother. I only attended her funeral. She died from Alzheimer’s disease. I never got to meet this woman my wife holds in such high regard. But I know where her trust was. It was in her Lord. My wife has conveyed this to me repeatedly over the 20 years of our togetherness. Lisa, her mom, and her brother, pretty much fought the world alone as she grew up, with a faces coming and going, and her father abandoning her when she was too young to even know what that meant. But her grandparents provided home base. Grounding. God. I see these people I never met all over the 3 of them even today many years past their leaving the world. They were that strong of Godly presence. It was her grandmother that was God’s vessel for her husband and the three of them.

I want to be that for my family. I want to be so transformed by him that my family for many coming generations will thrive from the rock placed within our blood. I was the least likely and poorest person to pick for such a position. But God has plucked me from my wretched nature and continues to shape me how he desires. It’s an ugly process. Some days I feel like I’m already walking in heaven, and other days I feel like my soul is ripped up into an infinite shred of shame and tears. But as time has moved, my trust has grown strong in my creator. I do not trust my worldly instinct any longer, and when I need a reminder why, God provides it with mirrors into the horribleness of what that worldly instinct created. I recoil at the sight of it when I recognize in the moment what’s going on. As if for a split second, I get to see myself as he does. That altar I put up has a wood surface. My tears flow upon it. Just before typing this they flowed and I squeezed my eyes as hard as I could…as if wringing out a soaked towel. My tears to my hands and absorbed into the wood. I offer them to him in worship. My weakness turned into his strength. And maybe…he can use this soul for something good. Something righteous. Something holy.

In God we trust? Solely. Wholly. He will make our paths straight.

Gary Abernathy

 

Burning Coals

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Proverbs 25: 21-22…”If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you.”

When God began to in earnest put me in, “God Boot Camp,” as I often describe it to myself, the first place my eyes were taken was the book of Proverbs. They’ve been in Proverbs ever since. Day after day, one each day, a repeating cycle of 31 Proverbs teaching me how to get along with the world as a child of God that doesn’t belong in it. A few things maybe I was doing right before boot camp, but for the most part, I’ve had it all wrong my entire life. None more so than Proverbs 25.

In my worldly mind, my enemy was my enemy, and while be it I’ve never been a particularly vindictive man, I certainly wasn’t going out of my way to help or feel sorry for said enemy. I saw them or it with strictly worldly eyes…only seeing the surface my physical capabilities could take in. Solomon’s wisdom is teaching us here that our enemy is but one thing, and it’s never what we can actually see with our human eyes. It’s the roaring lion, the serpent, it’s…Satan. That’s it.

Recently I was traveling from Florida to North Carolina by car while the ridiculously named, Winter Storm Jonas, was in progress on the entire east coast of the United States. The forecasters got this one right and it was a monster winter storm. With cold air and even snow flurries pushing all the way down to Florida, it was a highly unusual cold and miserable morning in Central Florida. I had stopped to pump gas in a tiny town between Gainesville and Jacksonville, and those of us doing so were not prepared for having to stand out in that while filling our cars. As strangers bonding in a winter-war-like fashion, we were laughing and talking to each other about how crazy it was to be freezing like that in Florida. It took about 3 minutes to fill a nearly empty tank. Then we got back in our warm cars. “Oh, how they suffered,” maybe Jesus said with sarcastic humor. I kept moving up the road until I came to Baldwin, Florida, which is where this journey would connect with I-10 East. I’ve traveled this road so many times I could do it blindfolded, and I know full well that the interstate entrance ramp at this particular junction is one of the busiest in the state. There are several truck stops off the exit, so getting on I-10 here is usually a lengthy wait. Because of this, the homeless and poor use that fact to make this a prime panhandling spot.

Due to the terrible weather and it being a Saturday morning, traffic was unusually light. Yet, as I approached the traffic light and entrance ramp, per usual there stood a panhandler. By his side was pit bull mix dog just sitting there in the cold by his friend, with a somewhat determined look on his dog face. As I got closer I noticed this guy was not your standard issue appearing panhandler. He was young, his face didn’t look like a baseball glove, and he at least didn’t appear to be to mentally unstable. What he did appear to be was very cold, as well he should have been. He had a smile and a cardboard sign promoting whatever the reason was he wanted a handout. I didn’t even read it. But I did notice he had his teeth still. Pretty rare in this situation.

The typical worldly reaction in that scenario is to think or say, “Look at this clown, out here begging for other people’s hard earned money, instead of working for it himself.” I’ve said that same thing many times in my life. But I didn’t say that this time, nor did I think it. God was bee lining me right to him. What I was thinking was Proverbs 25. There is my enemy. There stands Satan. Not the young man, not his dog friend, but the things I couldn’t see with my physical eyes. The reasons that put him standing there in the cold that morning for me to come upon. The things that were separating him from God. What am I to do? Heap burning coals on the head of my enemy.

Because there was nobody else there in that moment, I was able to stop in the turn lane, roll my window down, and engage him more than to just toss a dollar at him. He was surprisingly upbeat and friendly. We laughed about the cold and I encouraged him to quickly get out of it. I handed him more money than he would ever expect to get from me, and it lit him up with God’s glory. “Thank you! We (the dog) can go back to our tent and we’re staying in there the rest of the day.” He blessed ME first…both verbally and by his reaction. “Like cold water to a weary soul is good news from a distant land.” Proverbs 25:25. He embodied that verse entirely. God allowed me to be the good news that morning. But both of us rejoiced. We then told each other that God loves the other. Then off I went to continue my journey up the road.

Our enemy we are fighting is not the living thing God has sent us to engage…to be his light for. It’s the things Satan has used to put them there and to keep them held down in his dominion of bleak hopelessness. This is why we are not to judge less we be judged. It’s a very difficult lesson to learn. The world will never teach you that. Ever.

Who do you view as your enemies in life? What do you see in them? How do you react and engage? Chances are, it’s all wrong, and that’s why nothing is changing or getting better. Blessings are not flowing. I’m learning this lesson each day by God’s grace. Why? Because the Holy Spirit is my leader, my teacher, and my friend…nothing else will do. Jesus Christ is my salvation and hope. God is my father and I call him such.

Go to your knees in prayer and ask for the Spirit to teach you how to live for his glory. Your worldview will never again be the same.

Gary Abernathy

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