Mon/Tues 10/21-22/13 Waste

My Dear Father in Heaven:  Thanks for another day and thanks for all that You do for me and the ministry that You granted unto us to operate for You.  Please forgive me of my sins this day, those on the front of my mind and also those that I have done and don't even remember.  Please, Lord, be with our president and is family and keep him safe.  I pray first for his soul and then his safety and then his leadership over his family and our great nation.  Once again, Lord, we see in the news about a school shooting.  Please go back into our schools and protect our children.  Your children.  Lord, please be with those on our ongoing prayer list, and Lord, help Dolores with her day-to-day pain.  And Lord, I need Your touch.  Please, dear Lord, please relieve me of just a tad bit of pain, I am crying out to You, dear Lord, I need Your help.  I want to keep working each day for You, Lord.  Please, now help me with the message of today and then send it out to where You want it to go.  In Jesus' name, I pray and give thanks.  Amen.

Brothers and sisters, you can see by my prayers this morning that I need God's touch to carry some of the pain.  I feel like a wimp even asking because of the pain He carried/carries for me to this day.  But folks, I confess "I am weak, but He is strong."  Another school shooting yesterday, and one teacher dead, one teacher Marine who rushed the shooter to stop him from shooting others.  Pray today for our schools, and for our brave men and women of our military and of our state and local police.  Prayers also for Pastor Ed from Church of God.  Prayers also for Bob and Karen Hileman, for Burt and Patsy Emig.  For the Saylor family.  Please pray for the Ministries of Carry The Light.  Now, let me get to the message.  Sorry about yesterday, I just don't know where the day went.  However, it did lead me to the message title, called "WASTE."

Monday/Tuesday, October 21/22, 2013, Waste (Day One).

John 6:12 - When they had all had enough to eat, He said to His disciples, "Gather the pieces that are left over.  Let nothing be wasted."  (NIV)

2 Corinthians 4:16 - Therefore we do not lose heart.  Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.  (NIV)

2 Corinthians 13:9 - We are glad whenever we are weak, but you are strong, and our prayer is for your perfection.  (NIV)

I want to go back to the days of my childhood again (dirt streets and milk in a glass bottle).  For as long as I can remember, I love cars and trucks.  I would push them all around the  house.  We had a dirt bank alongside our house that my dear mamma tried to grow grass on, but I would build roads and push my cars and trucks around it.  When I started into first grade, I would take paper and draw roads on it and make little cars out of paper and drive them around.  My report card would come out and on it it was handwritten by the teacher, WASTES TIME!!  When my schoolteacher parents would see it, you can just about guess what was said to me.  Mamma would say, wait until your father sees this, and when daddy would see it, I would get told about it.  But to me, I was not wasting time, looking back I might have wasted some paper or a pencil or two.  As I moved up through the grades those words often showed up on my report card.  WASTES TIME!  While I and my parents had some debates over what was called wasting time, I can tell you one thing that we did agree on.  No food got wasted at our home.  None, zip.  Back in those days there were no food stamps,no food banks, and while we did have a small food pantry in our basement, it was because my daddy and other neighbors had gardens and would grow food.  Then my mamma would can it up and sometimes she would trade with others.  We also found out that if we were having chicken for Sunday dinner you could expect chicken corn soup the coming week.  Brothers and sisters, food was not wasted a bit back then.  In fact, I had been with my daddy already when we would stop at a farmer's field after the corn was picked and my daddy would ask if we could walk out and gather a few leftover ears of corn.

Today as I look at the scripture above and in the words right from Jesus "Gather the pieces that are left over.  Let nothing be wasted." ... I can see where my parents were coming from.  I know for a fact today that there are people who come to food pantries, take  food, and pull out what they want and PITCH THE REST IN A DUMPSTER.  While that has not happened at our food pantry, you need to start thinking these folks are just not hungry enough. j If people would just follow the Bible and we who love the Lord would take care of our neighbors, that would be great, and the GOVERNMENTS COULD GET OUT OF THE WELFARE BUSINESS.  One of the hardest things for me to do in our food pantry is to pitch out food, but sometimes after a food drive we must do just that.  You see, some people just get in their food cupboard at home and get out the old stuff and take it to a food drive.  We get things in that are five to up to ten, yes, ten years outdated, and we pitch it out, of course.  Sad to see the waste in our country while in some countries, and in fact some places in our own country people really do need the food.

My parents would tell me, "Waste not, want not."  And how right they were.  Often times when our ministry team gets together for meal, we talk about just how many meals one can get out of a ham.  First, the ham, and then you cook down the bones and use the broth.  We need to get back into the word and really look at it and go by it.

Today, I say to you as Jesus told us, let nothing be wasted.

Tomorrow, more on WASTE.  Now go forth, my dear brothers and sisters, praying for each other, loving each other, and sharing those blessings, and take heart and LET NOTHING BE WASTED.

Love ya.  Pass that on, please!  Pastor Dan