Veteran of the Lord’s Work

Tomorrow is a time of remembering our veterans— those who have served in various branches of our armed forces to protect our nation and our way of life. Without their commitment we would not have the quality of life we now experience, or the ability to worship freely.

To all the men and women who have served our nation I join many others in saying, “Thank you.” I appreciate the sacrifices you have made, being away from family and friends for extended amounts of time, in order for us to have the life we have today.

I am equally thankful for the men and women who have given their lives to the Lord Jesus Christ and fulfilled the missions He has placed within them to do His will and bring others to the saving knowledge of His real presence in their lives and His desire to be a part of their lives.

When I think of someone who gave his life completely to serving the Lord, I think of the Apostle Paul. When you doubt how much God loves you and can change you for the better, simply read in the Bible about Paul and you will be surprised to learn how God can take a horrible person and still use him or her for advancing His desire to bring others into His presence, love and forgiveness.

I wish that I had the tenacity of Paul to do the will of God in my life as Paul did in his. I wish I had not allowed the sin of disillusioned idealism to weaken my faith over the years.

I think there are a lot of people like me who want to give their best to the Lord, especially as we get up in years. There are things we wish we had done when we were younger and there are things we wish we could do now as we get older.

However, many times when we look around in our church settings, we become disillusioned in what we see taking place in the name of God and our desires to do something collapses.

The unified, loving, grace-filled churches and people we seek to be a part of are nowhere to be found. Again, this is when I wish I could have the tenacity of Paul to keep on keeping on, in spite of what I see and experience.

Every day I pray for the Lord to give me a huge portion of His Holy Spirit so that I might better understand what I should be doing for the day, the weeks, the months, and the years He may have allotted for me.

When my time comes to an end on this earth, I hope and pray that someone will have experienced a closer walk with the Lord because of the way I treated them, both in my words and actions, and I might be remembered as a veteran of the Lord’s work in their mind and heart.

Lord, give me the strength to be a Paul in the present.