We moved the summer I was going into the 2nd grade. My worst years in school was 2nd grade and middle school. The 2nd grade was rough because I went to a new school for only one year while we were transitioning after a career in the military. The kids in that school were horrible. None of them live in the free world today. At least I hope they don't.
The best thing about that year was speech. I had to take speech through the 6th grade for a huge speech impediment. If you didn't know me then, you would not believe it! God touched me at some point and now it is not my speech that is the problem, it is the stupidity to which I say what I say (at least at times). Every year that I took speech (no matter where I took it and I took in 4 schools over 7 years), the goal was to get a lima bean in a cup. I would practice saying the sounds and words that I had difficulty with . When I pronounced something correctly, I got a lima bean in my little bathroom dixie cup. The goal was to fill up the cups with lima beans. Once I filled a cup, a bell would go off and they would feed me a bowl of food. No, I'm sorry that Pavlov's dogs. Instead for me, every cup I filled up would give me a credit and I could buy something with my credits. I don't really remember the prizes...that is except for the prize I claimed in the 2nd grade. That year they had erasers shaped like football players. They were about 4 different poses that you could get. I ended up getting several and playing little football games with them. That was the best part of 2nd grade.
Why did I think about that this morning? I was trying to remember something that was a powerful illustration to me. Those cups were pretty powerful. I remember vaguely looking at my cup and seeing how good my day had been. I remember struggling with the sound of 'r' and not getting many beans. It is served as a powerful illustration for an area of my life that I severely struggled with.
Jeremiah gave a powerful illustration this morning that keeps ringing through my mind. It is found in our reading (www.lifejournal.cc) in Jeremiah 51:63-64-When you finish reading this book, tie a stone to it and cast it into the midst of the Euphrates, 64and say, 'Thus shall Babylon sink, to rise no more, because of the disaster that I am bringing upon her, and they shall become exhausted.'"
That is pretty powerful. The man of God said, "You are going to sink like a rock!" God is not going to put up with your mess forever. This junk is going to stop. And he was right. Babylon IS no more. What I keep thinking about is this: What kind of illustration does God need to give to us to get us to see that He will not tolerate our sinful patterns? The reality is that if we don't get recessive sins out of our lives, we will sink like a rock spiritually. It sometimes takes the thunder bolts and lightning strikes in our lives to get our attention, but it shouldn't. The greatest illustration that God gave us about the seriousness of our sins is the Cross of Christ. What better illustration could you ask for!
So, listen, no Babylonian mindsets today! Hear the Word of the Lord! Christ died so you could walk clean, so walk clean today and honor Him with your life!
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