2-21-2019

 Good Morning All,

       Luke 18:22-23; “When Jesus heard this, he said to him, “You still need one thing. Sell everything you have. Distribute the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then follow me!”²³ When the official heard this, he became sad, because he was very rich.”

     I was reading an article the other day about the world economies and how the Chinese economy was starting to slow and wane.  The author of this article wrote that he expected India to advance up to the top of the fast-growing economies.  I remember when India was the place with all the starving children.  If you didn’t eat all your peas or carrots, you were reminded that there were starving kids in India.  I remember watching a news show where they showed all these starving people while hundreds, if not thousands, of cattle just roamed around.  They were starving and all that meat was just standing there looking at them. 

    In India cattle were, and still are, considered sacred.  Since many believe in re-incarnation, they view eating a Hereford like eating a Henry.  But it was so ironic, these starving people refused to give up on their sacred cows and many starved while the cattle walked on by.

    Sometimes we have sacred cows in our life.  We have those things which we will not give up even though it would be better if we did.  Sometimes it is possessions but sometimes it is those sins that we just don’t want to let go off.  Maybe we are jealous of our neighbor, just a little envious.  We know that God wants us to love our neighbor and be truly happy that God has blessed him.  But we don’t want to give up that sacred cow.  We will be double good somewhere else and we’ll keep this little sin hidden away so we can bring it back at the right time.  Maybe we have a co-worker who we would like to see brought down a peg or two; it would serve them right.  Maybe a sibling or a sibling-in-law needs a comeuppance.  We know that God wants us to love one another.  We know it in our mind but we keep that sacred cow hidden in our heart; refusing to give it up.  We think it tastes better especially when someone else, a different neighbor or co-worker shares our feeling about the first person.  All we need is someone to feed our sacred cow and it will get real fat in a hurry.

    Our own personal prejudices are about as sacred as they get.  There are certain people we like and certain ones who we do not.  Rather than ask God to help us overcome these sins; we hold on to these hidden sacred cows.  We’ll let God into other parts of our lives but not into this part.  Yet when we do this, we lock God away from us in all of our life and soon we no longer feel the comfort of the Savior.  When we keep those sinful sacred cows, we deny our own forgiveness; we say that there are some things in life that it is OK to not forgive. 

     So, we need to go to the Father and ask for His help and guidance in losing those sacred cows.  They are only blocking us from enjoying all of the love and grace that God wants us to have.  God’s gentle mercies call us; listen to his call.

 Gracious and eternal Father, your mercies are new every day.  Help us to eliminate all those sacred cows in our lives that cause a separation with you; that stand in our way of your grace.  Help us to eliminate all those sacred cows which we do not even know we have.  Bing them out of the darkness into the light that we may see our sin and confess and release them.  Continue to mold and shape us Father.  In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.

God’s Peace,

Pastor Bret