Loyal to the End
What I call a good patient is one who, having found a good physician, sticks to him till he dies. –Oliver Wendell Holmes
Temporary
Commitment means a willingness to be unhappy for awhile.
No P.S.
A college man walked into a photography studio with a framed picture of his girlfriend. He wanted the picture duplicated. This involved removing it from the frame. In doing this, the studio owner noticed the inscription on the back of the photograph: “My dearest Tom, I love you with all my heart. I love you more and more each day. I will love you forever and ever. I am yours for all eternity.” It was signed, “Diane,” and it contained a P.S.: “If we ever break up, I want this picture back.”
We who have been baptized have professed our love for God and for others. We belong to Christ. There can be no P.S. in our life given to God. We can never break up with Him. We are His. We belong to Him—forever. –Charles Krieg
Lazy Christians
My single greatest concern is the growing inertia I see, inertia born out of our luxury and materialism. People are fooling themselves when they say the job is done . . . . The vast body of people in the world today have never been given enough information to know if they accept or reject Jesus . . . . Most people think what the gospel needs is more clever, skilled people, when what it needs is more people who are willing to bleed, suffer, and die in a passion to see people come to Christ. –Bob Pierce
I Want to Be Used Lord, But . . .
There was a pious old gentleman of an earlier generation who used to get up regularly at prayer meeting in his church to pray: “Use me, O Lord, use me—in some advisory capacity!”
Total Commitment
General William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, was asked the secret of his amazing Christian life. Booth answered, “I told the Lord that He could have all that there is of William Booth.”
How Committed Are You?
There is a story about two New York men who had never been out of the city. They decided that they had had it with city living, so they bought a ranch down in Texas in order to live off the land like their ancestors.
The first thing they decided they needed was a mule. So they went to a neighboring rancher and asked him if he had a mule to sell. The rancher answered, “No, I’m afraid not.”
They were disappointed, but as they visited with the rancher for a few moments, one of them saw some honeydew melons stacked against the barn and asked, “What are those?” The rancher, seeing that they were hopeless city slickers, decided to have some fun. “Oh,” he answered, “those are mule eggs. You take one of those eggs home and wait for it to hatch, and you’ll have a mule.” The city slickers were overjoyed at this, so they bought one of the melons and headed down the bumpy country road toward their own ranch. Suddenly they hit an especially treacherous bump, and the honeydew melon bounced out the back of the pickup truck, hit the road, and burst open. Now, seeing in his rearview mirror what had happened, the driver turned his truck around and drove back to see if he could retrieve his mule egg.
Meanwhile, a big old Texas jackrabbit came hopping by and saw this honeydew melon burst in the road. He hopped over to it and, standing in the middle of that mess, he began to eat. Now here come the two city slickers. They spied their mule egg burst open and this long-eared creature in the middle of it. One of the men shouted, “Our mule egg has hatched! Let’s get our mule.”
But seeing those two men coming toward it, the jackrabbit took off hopping in every direction with the two city fellows in hot pursuit. The two men from New York gave everything they had to catch him, but finally they could go no farther. Both men fell wearily onto the ground gasping for air while the jackrabbit hopped off into the distance. Raising up on his elbow, one of the men said to the other, “Well, I guess we lost our mule.” The other man nodded grimly. “Yes, but you know,” he said, “I’m not sure I wanted to plow that fast anyway.”
Involved or Committed?
Football coach Lou Holtz of Arkansas pointed out the difference between being merely involved and being truly committed to a cause. “The Kamikaze pilot that was able to fly missions was involved—but not committed.”