by Kevin Burton
The Scrabble words deployed against you that get you beat; those are the ones you remember the best.
Something kind of similar happened with my Bible memory verses recently.
I’ve written previously about my memory verses, typed on paper, taped onto index cards of various colors. I am up to 23 sets of cards, eleven verses to each set.
Unfortunately my mind is not like a computer. Sometimes verses memorized don’t stay memorized. I hate when that happens, especially when I can’t recall verses from some of the very early sets.
I have noticed though, that sometimes God plucks some verses from my memory temporarily, to emphasize them as a direct and immediate message to me.
As an aside, this is one way I know that the Christian life is not just having a big hardcover rulebook on your coffee table. It is a personal relationship with God.
Anyway, not long ago I had a terrible time with two verses on blue striped index cards, the third one and the fifth one. Here they are, God’s messages to me:
Philippians 4:6-7 “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ.”
James 1: 19-20, “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.”
These are verses I am very familiar with. Could not bring them to memory. There was just a big empty space there, like when someone else eats the last of the vanilla wafers and the box is gone. I know it was there. I just saw it!
Anxiety and anger. Neither one has done me much good over the years. I have returned to both though, as if to a familiar friend.
I have no reason to be anxious. I have no right to be angry.
I will use a bit from the Kev dictionary to explain. I have always recognized a distinction between the words troubling and troublesome that the real dictionary doesn’t seem to adhere to.
A situation that is generally troublesome could be troubling to one person but not troubling to another. That’s how I understand the words.
That’s my take on anxiety. What is troubling to the world should not be troubling to me as a Christian.
We all have troublesome circumstances we deal with daily. That’s life. My recent spike in anxiety is based on employment. The church I worked for the last two years discontinued the clerical/accounting/HR position after they looked at their finances and realized they couldn’t afford it. They now staff these functions with volunteers from within the church.
The job wasn’t a big part of my identity. I don’t think I have ever written anything specific about it until now. But once the job was gone it was easy to see it was propping me up emotionally. At least I had something going on.
(Now I’m trying to piece together a living. One interview, no offers yet.)
Had I been able to bring to mind the “be anxious for nothing” verse I would have skipped merrily on instead of having God’s loving reminder.
As for the “slow to anger” verse, that’s an even more embarrassing issue.
In Job 1: 20-22 wee see Job’s reaction to losing all his children, some of his hired workers and quite a bit of his property:
“Then Job arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.”
I quoted the King James version because it ends with the word foolishly.
God owes me nothing. Justice would place me in an endless burning hell. His mercy has placed me in the Heavenlies – as a promise now and a reality after death.
So I have all I need but, kind of like my cat, I often gripe to get everything I want. This ingratitude is unseemly to say the least..
Now My cat has a brain about the size of a Brazil nut. But I have a brain as hard to open as a Brazil nut. That’s why God showed me the “slow to anger” verse in His special way.
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