Never Be Put To Shame

Romans 10:8-11 NIV

“The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart,” that is, the word of faith we are proclaiming: ⁹That if you confess with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. ¹⁰For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. ¹¹As the Scripture says, “Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame.”

The days continue around here with nice weather continuing day after day for quite a spell! Still have a deep snow pack that’s slow in shrinking but the plowed out parts are getting larger every day. The cattle are still enjoying it all, got em kicked out of the big loafing barns and out in the seven acre calving lot so they can bed down in the clean snow. My days are basically non eventful, just do the normal work and try to keep busy the rest of the day. It sure is nice not having those thick coveralls on all day. I feel so much lighter!

Went to church last evening and am recovering from that. I do believe that the time is drawing near to pull out of that Children’s Church job, the job I am in my fifth year doing most Wednesday evenings. The grace is lifting as they say and its time to move on one of these days. Maybe before spring field work! I loved it for years but I know that when the grace lifts then I’m doing it on my own energy and that sometimes don’t work out all that hot!

This morning while working I took a slight break and just dug my pocket cowboy Bible out of the coat pocket and was just flipping pages and this is where I ended up, in Romans 10. I put it on the post exactly the way it reads in those pocket Bibles which is NIV. In this change of seasons that I’m going through I love to go back to the foundational verses that just ground that faith in me. Those simple verses that I always love to go back to all the time to remind myself of what is really going on in this walk.

That knowing that anyone who trusts in Him will never be put to shame! Yep, working all day knowing that the Lord God of the universe has adopted me as His son is quite the thought and I ain’t letting go of it anytime soon, well, how bout never! Daily chores take on a whole new meaning when a fella know that he knows that he will never be put to shame by the One that is above all. Quite a thought really! And what did a simple cattle raising person have to do to get into this position? Simply believe! Simply believe that Jesus is who the Bible says He is! I was teaching that last evening to the young folk and I think they got it down pat, that no works will get you to heaven. The Bible surely says that even though religion sure can come up with enough work to drive heaven out of anyone. Simply believe.

Jesus got the boot from the churches in His day, the synagogues, and He just hung around the regular folks who would listen. Ah, the simplicity of the Gospels! Hope for the hopeless, the ones the church ignores. The religious bigshots of the day were concerned about how a person looks, how they acted, how they obeyed the man made rules. But Jesus just laid it out the way it truly is. Those bigshots didn’t like Him a whole lot, disturbed their station in life. Guess that’s why I love the church we go to. Heck, I preach in jeans. Its the Word that’s important, not how a fella tries to impress folks. God doesn’t really worry about someone preaching in Wranglers if the Word is spoken and the one doing the preaching believes the Word and lays it on the line the way it was written! Now you take someone all spiffed up, preaching the Word that figures the nice suit is something really important in delivering the message, well, nothing wrong with a nice suit if a person can stand being in those things, but I really don’t believe it has much to do with our eternal destiny. Don’t get me wrong here, I ain’t knocking preachers in suits, just that there’s a certain class of folks that don’t really get going doing that, including me.

Just a country guy I guess! More important what’s in your heart and coming out of your mouth the way I figure it. And there’s allot of country folk that really never dress up fancy for anything and to demand it for attending church is what I believe to be one of the greatest sins church folk could ever commit. Not only the sin of pride, but of turning simple folk away from the Living God because of a fairly recent tradition. I say that cause not that many years gone by allot of church folk didn’t even have a good set of clothes. Just read some of the old stories of the little country churches that were on fire for God! The came in their overalls! They didn’t even have anything else and you know what, God sure didn’t care!

There’s room out here in the country for churches that just get back to the good old Gospel basics like the verses written above! Churches that don’t care about outward fake appearances. Churches that care only about Jesus! This goes along with country evangelism too. Bible studies, farm and ranch visits, what have you, just be normal! Just dress normal. Just talk normal! Just deliver that Gospel with the love of Jesus backing up every word!